


But you´re not dead, not as long as your soul remains unbroken

by ThatOneGirlBehindYou



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Emotionally constipated characters, Everybody Lives, FrostIron - Freeform, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Past Rape/Non-con, Polyamory, Suicidal Thoughts, at least as far as i´ve planned, future consensual smut, mostly Loki Natasha and Tony, possibly, standard zombie killing violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-01-19 06:49:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1459921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatOneGirlBehindYou/pseuds/ThatOneGirlBehindYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one really remembers when it happened, but everyone knows they used to call them by a different name before they settled on the one they use nowadays.</p><p>Maybe it´s a way to detach themselves, to turn them even more into monsters than they already were. The word came from Hollywood movies, even though movie zombies were still <i>whole</i>, with bony or dismembered creatures dragging themselves behind them. The term hadn't been so accurate then (or more precisely, the movies had been the ones mistaken), but it worked.</p><p>Calling them Severed makes them victims, after all, and no one wants to think of them as such when they sink their bloody fingers (they usually chew the nail to the root) into your daemon and bite down on them.</p><p> </p><p>Basically Avengers daemon!verse in a zombie apocalypse. It gets explained, trust me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **(FULL DAEMON LIST IN THE END NOTES)**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> In the His Dark Materials universe, a Daemon is a physical manifestation of one´s soul. Children´s daemons can freely change form, but will settle at a given moment (Commonly after puberty, but it can also happen at a younger age due to a remarkable event. Even once settled, the daemon can change form again due to a considerable trauma, but this is uncommon.) taking the form of an animal that represents their human´s personality or true nature. A daemon is commonly the opposite gender as their human, those with a same gender daemon are usually thought to be special in some way. Although daemons are an entity dependant of their human, they´re sentient and capable of speech, however, talking or staring directly at another person´s daemon is considered rude, and touching another person´s daemon (save from very special cases like with really involved couples or family) is the biggest taboo in this culture, akin to rape and torture. Lastly, as the daemon is one´s soul, they are physically bound to their humans; stretching separating beyond that distance (commonly short, but varies from person to person) causes a sensation of physical pain referred to as "the pull". However, there are procedures to separate a person from their daemon, Separation (which involves a gradual stretching of the bond by walking though a space the daemon can´t cross in) and Severing (an aggressive mutilation of the bond, often results in the subject´s death).

1

No one really remembers when it happened, but everyone knows they used to call them by a different name before they settled on the one they use nowadays.

Maybe it was a way to detach themselves, to turn them even more into monsters than they already were. The word came from Hollywood movies, even though movie zombies were still _whole_ , with bony or dismembered creatures dragging themselves behind them. The term hadn't been so accurate then (or more precisely, the movies had been the ones mistaken), but it worked.

Calling them Severed makes them victims, after all, and no one wants to think of them as such when they sink their bloody fingers (they usually chew the nail to the root) into your daemon and bite down on them.

-

Tony wakes up when a boot connects softly with his side, and he groans.

"Really? I just lay down!"

The room is still dark as fuck, so he has to guess on who the silhouette is, at least until they speak.

"I know. I'll take your watch tonight." And sure enough, now that he hears Steve's voice he can see the faint outline of Magna's crooked back, shuffling around at the back of the room. "Natasha says a small horde is closing down on us."

He groans again, and rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms. "Fiiiiine. You heard the man, Cole"

"She's way ahead of you" Steve answers with a chuckle. Tony strains his eyes a bit more and he thinks he sees the gleam of her greenish eyes coming from somewhere close to the plank-covered window. He rolls his eyes. How can his daemon be such a morning creature when he's anything but?

Before he rises, he stretches a hand to pat next to him, but it only touches the cold, dusty floor. She's not there. Of course. Steve pretends he didn't see it, and he pretends he didn't see him looking.

They walk out together, Cole walking between Magna's paws in a way that makes one wonder whether she wants physical contact with the bigger daemon or she's just trying to make her trip. Honestly, it could be any of those.

They come out on the second level, and they're momentarily blinded by the morning's gray light when they step out onto the balcony, where Thor's keeping an eye on the incoming horde. True, it's not as big as some of the ones they've encountered, but it moves fast.  
Thor's eagle daemon is perched on his shoulder, watching everything in a startling silence, compared with her human.

"The others?" Steve asks sending a quick look around. Thor points to the neighboring building, and they notice the window just across where they're standing is broken.

"Clint and Natasha went in to check it was safe"

Just when Tony's about to ask about Bruce, he hears a muffled conversation through his bond with Cole, and she comes into view not a second later, sitting on the metal sheet strapped to Ashwa's back.

"Good morning" Bruce greets them mid-yawn, and smiles at Tony's annoyed face. "I take it you didn't get your beauty sleep?"

"I want a statistic study, somehow we always get the sudden hordes when I just pulled an all nighter. Every. Single. Time" He complains

"I can carry you, if you're so tired"

Tony looks in time to see Thor's amused grin and he pretends to swoon into his arms.

"Now this is a real gentleman, you both should learn something from Thor"

"Thor is the man we all aspire to be" Steve chuckles. Magna's ears rise, and Lys flutters down to land on the railing, making them all focus on the broken window.

Not a minute has gone by when they hear flapping wings and Apolla perches carefully amongst the broken glass.

"Clear?" Magna asks, standing on her hind legs to look at Apolla. The daemon nods and looks back, signaling the return of her human.

"Nat's checking for a way into the next building, come on." He brushes the window clean of broken glass and extends his hands. Bruce has already finished untying the metal sheet from Ashwa's back, and Thor helps him push it over the railing until Clint can grab the other end and secure it on the window frame.

Ashwa climbs first, as always, walking carefully over the makeshift catwalk and waiting until Clint backs down to jump down. Bruce is already on behind her, waiting just long enough for his daemon to take her weight off the platform before crossing himself.

Tony tries to make as little noise as possible as he climbs over the railing. If the zombies notice them escaping even before they've broken into the building they'll be worse off than when they started. He motions for Cole to climb up after him, but she pretends to be very busy looking down at the street, and Steve laughs when he rolls his eyes. His fucking soul is a _brat_.  
Thor walks across with Lys perched on his shoulder again to avoid any noise, and Steve follows soon after. They pull the metal plank (apparently Magna has stated she feels less secure walking over it) and make a wide berth.

Cole jumps first, landing gracefully on Tony's waiting arms, and then Magna, and her huge paws make no noise when she touches down on the dusty floor before her human.  
They can already hear the zombies scratching at the building doors and Clint gives them a silent signal before walking down the hallway.

Natasha is waiting on the roof, and she looks like a movie star, profiled against the rising sun with her beautiful daemon perfectly still at her side.

"Did you find something?" Clint asks as Apolla circles over their heads.

"The roofs are close enough for us to get a few blocks on them." She tells them. "We'll have to make sure our exit building is clear, but it's our best choice." She looks at Steve, but he doesn't contradict her. He never does when it comes to this.

Below them, the broken city looks almost beautiful under the light of dawn.

\--

Darcy stirs in her sleep, and the bulk that is her daemon squirms under the blanket.

Jane sighs, and unwraps her own thin sheet to drape it over her friend. She taps on the window and Aster's voice is almost immediately in her mind.

_'There's nothing out here. Is her fever still up?'_

_'A bit, yes... I'm thinking we should drive into town before it gets worse.'_

_'How are we on fuel?'_

_'We should be fine, but I still hope we find a place to restock on the way.'_

_'Let's hope'_ He answers, and Jane smiles. It's been so long since her daemon stopped being unrealistically cheerful, and he thanks God for it. She hasn't been in the mood for deceptions and not getting her hopes up goes a long way to never be disappointed.

When Darcy wakes up it's already morning, and Jane sits Selvig's old rifle down on the floor before she stands and pours her a mug of warm tea from the kettle on the electric stove.  
Darcy doesn't speak until after she's drunk half of it; her throat must still be sore.

"Where are we?" She asks. Vita pokes his furry head out of the blanket and scurries into her lap.

"Where you fell asleep last night. I thought you needed the rest. But I talked to Aster, and we both think it's time for a break in. Your fever has just been going up and I'm worried."

"Do we have enough fuel?"

"Yes. How do you feel about driving? If you drop me right in front of a drugstore it shouldn't take me more than a couple of minutes."

"Are you suggesting you're going alone?" The reproach comes not in Darcy's voice, but in Vita's rich, deep tones. His big brown eyes burn into her and make her feel absolutely guilty.

"I'm going with Aster. I'll be fine." And it's weird and all that she's talking directly to her friend's daemon, but it's been so long they've all gotten used to it. She loves Vita almost as much as she loves Aster, and by the way Darcy tears the crusts of her sandwiches and saves the crumbs on a plate even though she's always going on and on about how birds give her the creeps, she knows the feeling is mutual.  
However, it's all moot in the end, because for all Darcy tries convincing her it's not safe, she's obviously not getting any better, and Jane won't lose her. Not to zombies, not to pneumonia. Just no, ok? If she has to pry the medicine from a zombie pharmacist's cold fingers then so be it.

The RV starts on the first try, and they're off.

\--

They're spending the night under a bridge.

It's not as bad as it sounds, for some reason the zombies tend to avoid running water and the constant murmur of the current soothes him and helps him relax.

They're all sleeping and he focuses on her.

She's beautiful, he's never been one to deny that. When they were younger, with clumsy big feet and unsettled souls, Thor often teased him about it and asked when he'd ask her out in mock tones of increasing aggressiveness, until he finally caught on with what everyone else already knew and asked her out himself.

Her Jano sleeps at her side, his enormous head rested on her belly that rises and falls softly as she breathes. A stray black strand rests across her forehead and he remembers when he was a teen, and all the hours spent wishing he was her, long before he found out what Sterk's name meant and understood he didn't need a war horse daemon to prove a point. Sometimes he still wonders if she ever wished she was like him.

He knows she didn't.

But it's nice, to think you weren't the only one to doubt your choices when the path became too hard.

He reaches to brush the strand aside, and her eyes are open at once and much too sharp on his face for her to have been sleeping.

They stare at each other for what feels like eternity, and it's at moments like these that he's reminded they're not friends. Just two strangers brought together by the wish of finding the one they love the most in the midst of this disaster.

"I can keep watch if you're tired." She offers in a whisper, even though Volstagg's snores would have gotten them discovered by now. She's cautious like that.

"I'm not."

"Get some sleep, Loki. If you pass out on us because you haven't slept in days we'll be in no shape to take you with us."

"I know. I don't expect you to." He thinks he sees her roll her eyes, but the sudden cold in his toes as his daemon wades in the riverbank distracts him. "I'm fine."

"What happened to Sterk?" Her question is so sudden he has to backtrack a bit to understand it. "I haven't seen him since we found you"

"I'm still whole, if that's what you're asking."

This time he _does_ see her roll her eyes. "I think we would've noticed by now, if you had been bitten."

"We just have a wide range."

"Loki, I've known you for years. I know about your range. I also know three weeks is far too much time to be apart from one's daemon, even for you."

"He's close. He's just hidden." She watches him in silence, like she can read him even though they both know she can't.

"Listen, if he's..." She cuts her speech and swallows heavily, as she sends a look to the horse daemon staring intently at them. "Jano got injured too. I managed to kill the zombies before they tore us apart, but he has a scar." She looks back at him, and Loki fantasizes for a moment that there's a glimpse of something in her eyes that has only ever been in Thor's. "We're survivors. The scar is ugly, but we're alive."

There's a voice in his head, laughing cruelly because she's getting _everything_ backwards, but he nods anyways.

"I think I'll take you up on that sleep offer."

He feels her eyes on him, and suppresses the urge to call Sterk to him, no matter she was right and three weeks is starting to feel like a lifetime.

 _'I'm sorry.'_ Sterk whispers in his mind.

His daemon's sorrow falls over him like a blanket and he wants so desperately to tell him he has nothing to be sorry for, but he can't bring himself to do it.

He doesn't answer. He hasn't answered in weeks.

\--

"Can't sleep again?" Bruce's voice comes out of nowhere, and he has to squint to distinguish the dark silhouette pillowed on the darker mass around it.

"Just wanted some fresh air. Wanna come?" He asks. At his feet, Cole takes advantage of the stop and climbs up the leg of his pants and the front of his shirt until she's sprawled on his shoulder. It takes Bruce a minute, but he finally stands up to follow him.

They make their way to the roof in silence, maybe because they don't want to wake anyone else, maybe because they're both thinking of what to say.

Cole's ears register movement ahead, and when they walk past the door with the faint light emanating from it Steve and Natasha are crouched over a dogeared map.

He can't contain the urge to roll his eyes, but he keeps walking. It's none of his business, after all.

"Do you still have nightmares?" Bruce asks first, as they take seats near the edge. Cole hops off Tony's shoulder and on the ground, and her golden fur is painted silver in the starlight.

"Don't you?"

"Not as often as before." The older man shrugs. "Staying on the move helps."

"I guess it does." Tony offers, and then stares off into the sky. One of the stars is twinkling the way her eyes did when she was trying to look professional and not laugh at his stupid jokes, and he feels Cole burrowing between Ashwa's paws. "She's fine now."

"She is."

There's a spare second in which he swears he feels Ichar's fur beneath his fingers, and Bruce's solid presence at his side, the way Ashwa curls herself over Cole when she tenses, are the only things that stop him from listening to the inviting song of the street down below.

Instead, his eyes latch on to a moving spot some streets away.

"... Is that what I think it is?"

-

"If I have to be totally honest, I'm kind of starting to lose hope." Steve groans. Half of the map is splattered in red X's and he's getting frustrated.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"Yes, but if I took everything you say to heart I would´ve put a bullet through all of our heads the moment the first attack was over."

"Maybe that would´ve been more merciful." She frowns down at the map and Steve feels a surge of warmth in his stomach that translates into a deep purr from Magna´s throat. And then of course Zorya turns around and slams a paw against her face. However, there are no claws involved and he takes it as a sign to move to her side of the table.

"There must be a settlement." He whispers. "You can´t be trying to tell me you honestly think we´re the only survivors."

"It would be just our luck."

"Don´t say that." His hand hovers an inch over her shoulder. "We´re alive."

"For all the good it does us."

He sighs, and he frankly wishes this side of her came out more often and in front of more people, because he doesn´t seem to be enough to reassure her. He wonders if Clint still even tries or if he´s given up long ago.

In all honesty, he doesn´t remember how he earned this honor, why is it that he´s allowed to see her when she´s tired of being a warrior, when others can´t. Whatever the reason, he treasures the moments as much as he´s troubled by them.

"Times are rough, but nothing lasts forever, Natasha." He mutters as he lets his hand brush her shoulder, and sighs in relief when she doesn´t shrug it off. "I promise."

"Do you, now?" She looks up at him, her full red lips curved in a smile, and he wishes he was worth something, he wishes he could reach that ever present seam of sadness deep in her eyes, if only to drown in it with her.

Seeing as he can´t, he opts for leaning down into her lips.

However, she´s pushing him away as soon as his lips brush against hers and he hopes he doesn´t look as hurt as he feels, when she gestures pointedly at the door and focuses back on the map.

Sure enough, Tony and Bruce come barging in a few seconds later.

"There´s someone in town." Tony says after he´s composed himself enough.

"What do you mean?" He feels himself tensing, Magna´s fur bristling in excitement.

"We saw an old RV driving with the lights off." Bruce clarifies. "They were driving slowly, we barely noticed them. They know what they´re doing."

"Where were they headed?"

\--

"Stop here." Jane instructs, trying to ignore her hand cramping from holding Selvig´s rifle too hard. The drugstore is just across the street, and they haven´t run into a single zombie on their way here. She has a bad feeling, and Aster stays silent, which means it's probably right on track. "I´ll be back in a minute."

"Take Vita with you."

"What?" She turns at the sound of Darcy´s voice, dancing on her feet because _they´re losing too much time._

"Leave Aster here. That way I´ll know if you´re in trouble." Darcy explains, and her flushed face is determined enough so that Jane sighs and opens a window for Aster to fly in. Vita runs to her heels, careful not to touch her.

"We´ll be back."

"Of course you will. If you don´t come back on your own I´m going in for you."

-

At first the drugstore feels as empty and dead as it had looked on the outside. Many of the shelves are either empty or have been toppled over, and Vita informs her most of the medicines sprawled around the floor are useless, all crushed and mushy.

"We need something for the fever and maybe an antihistaminic." She instructs him.

"Jane."

"Hm?" She spins on her heels and finds that he´s stopped a few steps behind her, at the middle of an aisle. "What´s wrong?"

"I can´t go further." He answers, all droopy ears and hanging whiskers.

She curses under her breath. "That´s fine, stay there. I won´t go very far." People with bird daemons usually have a wider range than common folks, so she manages to walk to the end of the aisle. Still, she can feel the exact moment she finds their limit, and Aster´s presence starts pulling her back like a magnet or a hook stabbed in her chest.

The only remaining boxes there are stomach remedies, so she turns and walks back to Vita. The satisfaction is short lived, however, because she has to repeat the procedure on the remaining aisles.

By the last one, her vision turns blurry almost as soon as she takes a step out of their range, but she manages to identify a brightly colored box, and she snatches it off the shelf as if it´s about to disappear.

"JANE!"

At the daemon´s scream her hand flies straight to Selvig´s rifle and she pulls herself to her feet. The zombie is still dressed in a blue apron with the drugstore´s logo and she wants to cry because her lame attempts at humor always backfire in the worst way possible.

And that´s when she sees it going after Vita.

She goes into overdrive, her body floods with adrenaline and she slams the back of the weapon on the zombie´s nape. It doesn´t go down (she´s always wondered if they feel any pain at all) but it does turn its attention on her.

"Vita! Go back to Darcy!"

It takes a step back and stares at her like a dog sniffing meat, and it might not be too sentient or too intelligent but its instincts are good enough to tell it she´s half its size and the only thing between them is the thin black stick in her hands.

Its grayish hand clamps down on the barrel to pull her in, and she struggles as much as she can but its pull is too strong, and she loses terrain by the second.

She tries telling herself that she´s safe, that Aster is back with Darcy and it can´t get to him, it can´t harm him. But the blunt teeth and the maddened stare are not a light menace and she knows they´re the last things she´ll see.

Her last thought goes to her best friend, and she wonders whether Aster will vanish when she dies. She kind of wishes he can stay back and keep Darcy and Vita company.

And then the zombie´s head is flying all the way to the drugstore´s entrance.

The headless body convulses against her for a second before falling in a heap at her feet, and lets her see the huge, bat-wielding blond that saved her life. Her heart doesn´t stop hammering and she snaps her head back.

"Vita?!"

"I´m here." He answers, and she finds him a step from her feet, huddled under the wings of a golden eagle big enough to take a small child away for lunch.

"I told you to go back." She lectures him as the eagle daemon hops away, but it lacks fire.

"I wasn´t going to leave you alone." He says, his head held high in defiance and his tail snapping back and forth behind him in discomfort, and Jane´s heart clenches when she pieces together that he must be stretching his bond with Darcy pretty bad.

"He´s a brave one, your daemon. He had nearly chewed the zombie´s calf off by the time I got to you." The stranger comments with a husky voice and a grin that takes up most of his face and nearly makes his eyes disappear.

The rifle´s metal is cold under her hands and it serves to remind her that she´s nowhere near safe with this man. If anything, she´s in a different kind of danger. So she sweeps aside her first question (something amongst the lines of `Hey are you by any chance a Bernini sculpture come alive?´ ) and replaces it with something much more appropriate.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" She asks and points the barrel straight at his chest.

The eagle daemon shrieks in indignation and flutters to her human´s shoulder, but he mutters something at her, and drops the bat slowly, before he lifts his hands in a soothing gesture.

"My name is Thor, Thor Borson. My friends and I saw your RV and we thought you might need help."

It´s almost a reflex, one of her hands slides down the rifle´s length to rub at the scar on her hip. She hates groups.

"Your friends? Where are they?"

"They must be outside." Surrounded. Perfect. "You´re safe, let´s get out of here."

"Nice." She huffs. Vita stands at her heels and his presence is comforting as this giant of a man walks her to the front of the store.

-

"She´s coming." Aster whispers in her ear, and Darcy nods in silence. The RV´s door is unlocked, and if Jane and Vita can somehow slip past the freaking crowd waiting for her at the entrance then there might be a chance for them to escape.

She´s still wondering why they haven´t come and got her out yet, they surely heard her gasps and her grunts when she felt herself being pulled apart from her daemon, and Aster´s desperate cawing not a moment ago.

The front door opens and Jane comes out, followed by a guy that´s even bigger than the bigger-than-big guy already waiting with the group. Where the hell do these guys get the time to lift in the middle of a zombie apocalypse?

The short-haired blond walks forward, and his cougar daemon follows suit.

"Hello. I´m Steve, are you all-right?" He asks, and Darcy can practically hear his amiable smile. She rolls her eyes. At her side, Aster bristles and trembles in anticipation.

"I´m fine." Jane answers, all furrowed brow and clenched teeth.

"That´s nice to hear. We were in this block just a few nights ago, a horde chased us out. When we saw your vehicle we thought on checking on you, sometimes a few zombies drift away from the main group." The cougar daemon plops down on her belly by his side, and stretches her neck to try and touch Vita´s nose with her own, but he takes a step back and nearly bumps into Jane. "... Are you sure you´re ok?" He asks again.

"I am. I just want to get back into my car and go."

"Well, that´s not very polite. My buddy here did just save your life." Another man speaks up. This one´s short, but he speaks with such a confidence that Darcy has no trouble imagining him standing in front of a crowd or approaching her at some bar.

"Thank you. I´m leaving now." Jane takes a step to the RV, without turning her back on them.

The not-Steve-blond makes as if to grab her arm. "Hey, wai-"

"Don´t touch her, Thor." A woman´s voice rises this time, and a small redhead steps forward with a lynx trailing after her. "She´s scared."

Thor frowns, obviously confused, but he stops his movement. The new woman comes to a halt giving Jane a wide berth, and her lynx turns and sits, staring straight at Aster across the street.

"You can leave if you want. Your friend is safe too." She starts. "But they´re not lying. I have traveled with them all for months now. We will not hurt you."  
The women stare at each other, measuring the risks.

"We have a safe building cleared out, and enough food and water. You can both come with us if you need time to rest, and you can leave as soon as you feel ready." The woman offers.

Jane looks across the street, and Darcy meets her eyes through the window.

Darcy sighs, nods, and opens the door because if Jane´s going to get kidnapped and killed then she´s going to get kidnapped and killed with her.

The group makes its way to the RV and they climb on quickly, sending wary stares all around as if they´re the ones at a disadvantage.

"Where to?" Jane asks the woman as she sits behind the wheel and Aster takes his place on her shoulder.

\--

They´ve been walking for hours, and it feels like days.

She winces, when she realizes it´s been months since she´s felt well rested. She looks around at the others and knows she´s not alone with the feeling; no matter how much food they manage to find, how well they try to time the watches, it´s starting to take its toll on them.

Volstagg has lost so much weight he´s almost unrecognizable, he´s chewed his nails so badly his fingers are always at least a bit bloody, and Cariad´s bushy tail is perpetually between her hind legs now. She looks back sometimes, and stops to stare at something none of them can see. She whines once or twice and then makes as if to move towards whatever it is she´s watching, but then decides to go back to her human. It´s always the same, and Sif is pretty sure Cariad´s the only one asides from Loki that actually knows where Sterk´s at. She still hasn´t decided if his need to take care of them all is either sweet or sad but she allows it anyways, because they might not need his protection but Volstagg is a father without children and he _needs_ someone to look after.

Hogun actually looks the same, a brooding presence with Nad (her name is actually Nada, and they all hate it because it means `hope´ but that didn´t stop the kids in high school from joking that Hogun was so bland his soul was actually `nothing´ and taking his already rare smile away a bit more each day) at his side. He usually keeps close to Loki, since he´s the only one that won´t try to strike a conversation with him, and his apparent lack of daemon seems not to bother him. In theory everything´s fine with him, but she knows it isn´t because he doesn´t meet her eyes anymore and whenever he does there´s something missing, a light that had always been there no matter how silent he was and she fears he´s losing the very meaning of his soul.

Fandral´s change is not noticeable on his person, but becomes obvious when you look at Hir. The peahen´s feathers have never been any different from any other member of her species (they all used to joke that she didn´t need to be flashy, that Fandral himself was the peacock and had just misplaced his tail) but now they look grey and sad, as if covered in a thin layer of dust, and most of her crest has fallen off. She used to preen and check herself out on every reflecting surface they walked by, and now it seems as if she pointedly avoids them. The man himself tries to give off an impression of normalcy, but he jokes and smiles less each day and Sif wants to cry because her friends are strangers now.

And then there´s Loki.

They´ve always been `friends´just for a lack of a more fitting term, and yet when he had stepped bloody and wide eyed out of Thor´s house (she had been alone back then, and it had been the first place she´d thought of going to) they´d decided to stick together. Even now she´s not sure whether she did it out of loyalty for Thor or because she remembers the sickeningly pale child that took on everyone´s shit for having a male daemon and held his head high anyways. It just felt right at the time. They had always kept an eye out for Thor´s little brother.

If he´d looked sick as a child, now he looks like death warmed over. They spend hours walking under the searing sun, but he´s paler every day. He takes the smallest rations at every meal and his cheekbones stand out in such a way that sometimes she looks at him and thinks she´s staring at a skeleton. His silence is startling, and she remembers the days he´d reply with biting remarks at each and every one of Fandral´s bawdy jokes. And over all, Sterk´s still missing. She tries not to worry (as she told him some nights ago, she´d have noticed right away if he´d been Severed) but it´s hard when she looks at this man that´s grown alongside her and that´s now killing himself slowly without even giving them a reason or a chance to help.

So she walks in silence but for the steady clopping of Jano´s hooves, and she remembers. It´s all she´s done for weeks.

It begins with thinking of times when they laughed and drank, when she danced and kissed and didn´t fear for her life every waking second. She remembers the days when she took everything for granted and she loves them and she hates them in equal measure.

She´s become a stranger too.


	2. Chapter 2

****

2

There's something inherently interesting, Tony thinks, of the way these two girls have infiltrated their lives.

They're still nervous when they come into the abandoned building they've claimed as their own, their daemons huddling so close to the two of them that he's not sure at first of which belongs to whom, (turns out the raven is Jane's and the otter is Darcy's, which is kind of unsettling when you remember how they found them.) until Darcy's fever starts acting up and she and Vita have to lay down for a restless sleep.

"You do know you're not that kind of doctor, don't you?" He asks Bruce after he declared she's to take a pill and sleep the fever off.

"It doesn't take an expert to figure it out." He answers, while Ashwa bats Cole away with a paw as big as her whole body.

-

Jane parts in good terms with the rifle, but whenever someone enters a room brusquely or approaches her all of a sudden her eyes harden and her hand flies to her left hip. Tony makes no mention of it because he's seen the outline of a knife and also because he knows a knife is not a weapon you kill _zombies_ with, and he definitively doesn't want to see her using it.

-

"Thor's worried about her." Clint mentions out of nowhere a couple days later.

"Is he?"

"He keeps telling her she's safe."

"What does she say to that?"

Clint grins. "Give us a moment."

Tony does, curious, and breaks into a grin when Apolla flutters up and perches to whisper in her human's ear.

"So?"

"Our guy just got told off again."

"How bad?"Tony asks because yes, he's a bit sadistic.

"Listen, thanks and everything, but we're still leaving as soon as Darcy gets better." Apolla cuts in before Clint can even speak, doing a gold-worthy impression of Jane. If she had settled in a beak-less form she'd be giving him a smirk, he's sure.

"We shouldn't get such a kick out of this." Tony smiles as he lies down on the roof.

"But we do." Clint shrugs with a grin that drives his point home. "We're base creatures."

-

Darcy gets better within a few days, just as Bruce predicted. Tony finds himself talking to her a tad too often, because she's still bed-ridden, and they can't move and he's bored as hell.

"So? How're you liking the Steve and Co's Bed and Breakfast?" He asks a week or so later.

"The walls could use a painting." She smirks. "And I'd introduce the personnel to the concept of uniforms."

So of course Clint and him respond by wrapping Thor and Bruce in makeshift nurse dresses fashioned with a pair of grayish sheets for her next meal (they even make a nurse hat for Ashwa and it's both the cutest and most ridiculous thing), and stay by the door laughing their asses off until Natasha comes up to shut them up.

-

"Darcy's getting better." Thor mutters.

"She is." Jane answers, and her voice is less cold than it was before because Thor has that effect on everyone..

"You'll be leaving soon, then."

"Most likely, yes." For a second it seems like that's the end of it, and Clint and Tony start getting to their feet, disappointed.

"Thanks again." That's her daemon's voice and Tony shudders. There's just something weird about the way Aster and Vita interact with people without hesitation.

Whatever, Thor trips on his words to answer. "It was noth..."

"It _was_ something." She cuts in his sentence. "Darcy was very ill. And you saved Vita." The fact that she sounds much more grateful for that fact than she did for having been saved herself is a bit telling. "Thanks."

They flee the scene immediately after; they don't even need to imagine the smile Thor's   
sporting at the moment.

-

"What do you think of them?"

Natasha shrugs.

"They're fine. Though…" She answers after a small consideration. "…they have to be, to have survived so long on their own."

"But you do know there's something they're not telling us, right?" He presses on.

Steve arches an eyebrow and even Magna stares up at him, drilling him with her too sharp eyes, but in the end they're both too nice to say it. Natasha isn't.

"Have you told them about Pepper, then?"

Cole's fur puffs up in record time, and Tony bends to pick her up before he leaves the room without another word. 

\--

"I want to talk." She says by way of greeting. Loki stares at her, expressionless, but the corner of his mouth quirks up and she can almost hear the condescending 'You just did.' She pulls at his wrist, and it feels bony enough to cut something and thin enough to crumble under her grasp. "Come." She orders.

He obeys. It's a bit like dragging a balloon around, and Sif can't help but to think that any attempt at manhandling Loki _before_ would have ended with either a bruised shin or a black eye, possibly both. It makes her angry.

Fandral and Hogun stay to try and start a fire, but Volstagg follows them slowly, allowing a distance between them.

They have stopped in a small town that by all signs is emptied of both zombies and people, the better for them. There's still an upturned car in the middle of the main street, laying on top of a dark stain that must have been a gas puddle some time ago.

That's where she leads Loki, all the while keeping an eye out for any sign of movement. He leans against the car and waits for her to start. She lets go of his wrist and tangles her hand in Jano's mane.

"I want to know why you're trying to kill yourself." She drops. Tact has never been one of her qualities.

"Excuse me?"

Jano neighs angrily at his surprised expression, and she holds his mane tighter before answering. "Do you think I'm blind Loki? Or just stupid?" She snarls. "You barely eat, you sleep even less, you don't carry any weapons... Frankly, I'm surprised you thought we wouldn't notice."

He rolls his eyes, and there's a spark of the old fire in them.

"I couldn't give less of a crap as to whether you found out or not."

"If you keep up with that, you'll die before we find Thor."

"That would suck, wouldn't it?" He smirks, then rolls his eyes. "I'm going to last."

"But just until then, right?" She asks again, and sighs. "Why?"

"That's none of your business."

"Like hell it isn't. What am I going to tell him when..."

"Worry about that when you find him, Sif." He cuts her, sneering. "He could be dead, for all we know. Or worse." And he turns around as if to leave.

"Don't be ridiculous." She snaps. Volstagg has reached them and he lands a big hand softly on her arm to stay her.

"You would have felt it." He intervenes in a calm voice. Loki snaps around in a flash, and if looks could kill he'd be a pile of soot right now. "I felt it." Volstagg ignores him to continue, and Loki's face falls at that. For a second it actually looks like he might apologize, and Sif is about to avert her eyes because his are reddening and she knows he hates crying as much as herself, but it doesn't come to that. 

He spins on his heels again, and walks.

"Where are you going?" She asks when he's half the street away. He doesn't answer, and she reacts automatically. She launches into a race, with Jano and Cariad by her side and Volstagg behind her, but Loki has never been stupid.

"Loki, wait!" She yells, almost pleads because he's her _only_ chance, but Loki turns on the next corner and picks something from the ground (she knows it's Sterk, but she doesn't even get a glimpse of the coyote daemon before Loki stuffs him up his hoodie) and then he´s climbing up a fire escape because he knows she can't follow him there, not with Jano's form. Volstagg takes her around the building, but a window's already broken, signaling Loki´s way out and there's no sign of him anywhere.

Jano huffs once and it's all the warning they get before he kicks a trashcan and sends it rolling across the street. Cariad lowers her ears and rises onto her hind legs to nuzzle his huge round cheek.

"Cari has Sterk's trail." Volstagg assures her, and she sighs.

"Now he's definitively going to die." 

"Trust him a bit."

"Are you aware of what you're saying?" She frowns.

"He said he planned on staying alive until he found his brother." Volstagg sighs. "You know how he is when he sets his mind to something."

"I hope you're right." She mutters, her anger bleeding out off her as slowly as water draining of a sink.

"We're going to find him." Volstagg says after a moment, with a comforting hand on her shoulder she leans against, and she's grateful for this man and the fact that she can call him friend.

\--

"There's something I don't understand." Darcy says behind her hand of cards, and Bruce's eyes drift up to her in a second. It's not like he has to look at his hand anyways, he's memorized it. It sucks.

"What?"

"Why are you on the move?"

He frowns. "What do you mean?"

"Just that." She shrugs. "Why are you on the move? Why not just stay here?"

"... Why were you on the move?" Bruce asks back, still confused. Darcy's face darkens.

"But that's different. We're a small group, if you can even call us that. We usually restock in any empty town we come across, and then we just... Keep moving." She explains, setting down a pair of aces. "You're a big group, you could settle down."

"We used to be bigger."

"Oh." And he loses sight of her eyes when she turns them down. "Sorry."

"That's fine." He sighs. "We're actually looking for a bigger settlement. Preferably one with enough people to spare some to clear out a research facility."

"What kind of facility?"

He frowns and finally puts his hand down; he's going to lose either way.

"How familiar are you with the concept of Rusakov particles?" He asks, and of course her face falls slack at it, she's too young and it probably wouldn't interest her anyway.

"Not much. Is there a colloquial term? You know, for us mortals?"

"Dust."

Her eyes shine in understanding. "I thought that was just a fairy tale."

"That's why we use the scientific term." He smiles. Next to them Vita has gotten closer to inspect Ashwa, and Bruce feels his daemon's anxiety, her concern for the smaller daemon.

"And why do you want a Dust facility?" Darcy asks, successfully reclaiming his attention. "I thought your science had something to do with gamma rays?"

Bruce raises an eyebrow at that; he's pretty sure if he ever mentioned his specialty it was a fleeting comment, so the fact that she remembers is a bit surprising.

"Turns out they're somewhat related." He starts. "Dust behaves similarly to other wavelengths, so in theory we should be able to manipulate it, given that we have the right equipment."

"And what do you want to manipulate Dust for?"

He hesitates, and he feels his heart in his throat like every time he's about to tell anyone about this.

"Lack of Dust is a direct consequence of severing." He says for way of explanation.

"Please tell me you're implying what I think you're implying." She mutters, and for a second he thinks, puzzled, that her excitement is gone, before he notice it's still there, shielded and compressed into a single, intense stare and a shaky question.

"It's not exactly a cure." He admits. "More like a remedy, I guess."

"How does it work?"

"Well... We know the first zombie was originated when a mutated virus infect a human's bond with her daemon, that's how it works. When your daemon gets torn off of you the virus is feeding on the energy generated by the rupture and it infects your magnetic field, dissipating Dust around you. Thus, they feel the need to keep breaking bonds and feed off that energy." He explains. "There's no way to create an artificial daemon, but in theory, bending a big enough amount of Dust in their way should render them temporarily pacific, at least for long enough to dispose of them safely."

There's a long silence, long enough for Bruce to wonder once more if he's not overestimating his skills.

"Do you think it could turn them functional?"

"What?"

"Functional, like... Regular humans? Some severed are, they just behave like they´re severely drugged."

"Only a minimal percentage." He replies once he's gotten back in sync. "There's a reason why it's illegal and even supervised separation is a gray legal zone."

"That's... The best news I've heard in a while." She smiles and it's still guarded, still not full and he clenches his fists on his lap because she's so _young_ , she shouldn't have to be afraid to feel joy.

"It's just a theory."

"Still, it's a great one. It's nice to see someone that hasn't just entirely given up."

\--

"Please tell me I didn't just hear you say you wanted to keep moving South."

Steve's eyes crack open at her clipped tone and he has a brief moment in which he asks God what he did to deserve having this ruined, when she's finally agreed to stay the night.

"You kind of did... What's particularly bad about going South?"

"Running water."

"Sorry?"

"Running water. Zombies avoid it. And now you're telling me you want to march us into the desert."

"We'd hardly be going as far down as the actual desert. I only plan on moving down to Mexico in case we don't find a settlement along the way." He turns to give her a reassuring smile, but she's frowning. Behind her, huddled at her corner of the room, Magna lets out a pitiful purr.

"Even ignoring that last part, I'm sure you're aware that even if the border doesn't actually qualify as a proper desert, northern Mexico _does_ "

"I'm aware. I'm also pretty sure there are a lot of big rivers on northern Mexico, if it's running water you're concerned about." He shrugs. "Besides, you're thinking too hard. I said I'm just considering Mexico in case there are no settlements before we get to the border."

She sighs and Zorya, who's been huddling beside him a safe distance away from any of his limbs, tenses. "I'm getting pretty tired of discussing this."

And he doesn't want to be angry, really, not at her, not ever. But Magna snarls low in her throat and gets to her feet to walk to his side. Perhaps he's tired too.

"Then let's not bring it up."

"I feel like I _should_ bring it up now. You're marching me to my death because you want to keep believing this nonsen..."

"In case you have forgotten, I'm not the only one looking for a settlement. Bruce and Tony are too."

"Yes, because you keep giving them hope, which is a bit cruel on your part if you ask me." She sits up and starts gathering her clothes from between the sheets. "I'm not going to put myself in further danger for nothing, and if you're willing to risk the others then maybe you're not as much of a leader as you want to think."

He _does_ get angry then, mostly because of the accusation that he doesn´t care for his companions, and he has to look down at his hands to make sure he hasn't grown the claws Magna's grounding into the ragged carpet.

"What are you going to do, then? Stay here?"

"I'm going to keep moving North." She answers after poking her head out of her blouse's collar. "When you tell them your plan I'll tell them mine. If Jane and Darcy want to split then I'll go North with them. If they don't then I'm going on my own."

"Don't be ridiculous." He buries his face in his hands and digs his fingers through his hair.   
"You'll get yourself killed. You're not leaving on your own." He says and it's final in a way it's never been with her. He feels the weight of a stare and looks down into Zorya's cold eyes.

"Try us." And she jumps over him and at her human's side and Natasha doesn't even look back as the door closes behind her.

Magna howls and rips off a strip of carpet.

-

She's still all clenched fists and tight lips by the time she arrives at Clint's chosen bedroom. The door is closed, but she knocks once and hears his steps as he moves to unlock it.

"Were you sleeping?" She asks, but it's a formality. Apolla is perched at the windowsill, her eyes sharp and her posture rigid.

"Nah. You know I don't sleep a lot." Clint smiles as he lets her into the room.

It's carpeted as well, and it puffs out tiny clouds of dust whenever her feet land on it. There's a mattress pushed over to one corner of the room and that's where she heads for.

"... Are you ok?" Clint takes a seat next to her but doesn't touch her.

"I'm fine." Out the corner of her eye she sees his lips curve into a fond smile, and she hears the flutter of Apolla's wings as she glides down and hops her way to Zorya.

"Nice." He waits for her to add something, and then when she doesn't: "What did he do this time?"

She holds it up for a moment longer, but eventually she lets it all come crashing down and leans into his side. She always does. "The settlement."

"Ah..." Is all he says at first. "I'm sorry."

She sighs. They've gone over this before. Still, Apolla takes off from Zorya's back and lands as close as she can to her hand.

"What?" She asks dryly, meeting the eyes of the hawk.

"You know very well what." The daemon chastises. At her side Clint snickers a bit until she stands up abruptly.

"Too soon, Apolla" He smiles ruefully, but Natasha and Zorya are already closing the door at their back. He huffs and flicks his daemon in the face. "Congratulations."

"Well you sure as hell weren't going to tell her. It´s always just `I´m sorry´s with you. We´re the only ones she´d listen to." She pecks angrily at his finger.

"It's not worth the trouble and you know it." 

\--

He´s hungry.

He keeps walking for another block, until Sterk starts nibbling on his shoulder.

"I´ll drop you." He warns, and his daemon pokes his furry head out of the neck of his hoodie.

"You have to eat something." He mutters, flattening his pointed ears back.

Loki takes one look at his face, his muzzle scrunched in worry and his concerned eyes and feels like he just swallowed a cannonball. Sterk looks utterly betrayed when he´s set back on the ground, but Loki doesn´t stop to look at him. Instead, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his last strip of beef jerky.

"We´ll have to stop and get supplies." He hears Sterk say at his back. His only acknowledgment is a sharp nod of head, and he resumes walking while chewing absentmindedly on the snack. Sterk lets out a sigh, but follows in his footsteps.

"I´m sorry." He whispers.

Loki walks faster.

\--

"So? What´s this you wanted to tell us?" Tony asks, once he´s noticed no one else seems particularly willing to. 

The room is packed. The bigger daemons, Ashwa, Magna and Lys are all huddled in a corner, away from any accidental contact. The rest of them rest on shoulders or arms except for Zorya, who keeps pacing the length of the room over and over again.

"Well... Darcy´s well enough to move around without risking to get worse, and we´ve already been here for too long, so I figured it was time to decide on what we´re going to do." Steve answers. He´s pulling at a loose thread on his faded blue sweatshirt and Tony arches an eyebrow when he notices. Steve is a pretty nervous person all right, but whenever he´s sharing a plan with them it´s because he´s thought it over a thousand times already.

"What´s the idea?" Bruce asks.

Magna´s tail is swishing back and forth and Cole jumps down from his arms to go to her. It looks like a joke, the sandcat sitting right in front of the cougar as if shielding her against the world, but Magna stops her fidgeting and that´s all that matters. Steve aims a grateful smile at him and Tony shrugs it away.

"I think we ought to keep moving South." He says carefully, and paces a wary look around the room. "I know the biggest energy research facilities are located in the North, but we´ve already been there and they were crawling with zombies and without a settlement in sight." He nods to Bruce and the scientist nods back mutely. He still feels guilty, Tony knows. He pats his back. "We can go check the Texas research center. Maybe it will be clear, or maybe we´ll find some more people to help us wipe it clean."

"And what if we don´t?" This time Thor´s the one to ask.

"Then we keep going South. There are two mid-sized centers in Mexico and I´ve always thought the South would be a much safer place, if we can get there first." He then turns to Jane and Darcy and composes a gentle smile. "You´re welcome to join us if you want to. If you don´t, you can stay with us for a couple days more. We´ll break into the mall to get supplies and then you can go on your own."

"And if you choose to leave." Natasha´s voice cuts through the peaceful silence that Steve´s words left behind like a hot sharp knife. Said blond turns to look at her with a look that´s not warning so much as it´s pleading. "I was wondering if you´d like it if I went with you."

So Tony is currently balancing between making himself invisible in a corner and restraining himself from breathing, because he's pretty sure the slightest movement on his part will end in tragedy. A quick look around confirms the rest of the group shares his opinion. Zorya has stopped pacing, and is instead crouched down in a straight line across from Magna, like waiting to pounce or be pounced on. Cole shoots a look at each and then silently slips away from between them.

Clint's voice breaks the spell that has settled down on them.

"This is not funny, Nat." He says in a mutter laced with irritation, but she doesn't look at him.

"It's not a joke." She tells the room in general. "I think going South is too risky, and I've tolerated this settlement dream of yours for too long. I'm going North with or without company."

"Slow down there, little miss sunshine." Tony frowns. It might be a foolish dream, but it's Bruce´s and it was Pepper´s , so he feels obliged to defend it. "Can I direct you back to three months ago when we got that radio transmission? Who sent it, a cat walking across a keyboard?"

She glares back at him. "You are totally right, I forgot that stray transmission gave us all the needed coordinates and now we're living in a comfortable and well protected base.

"Natasha..." Steve's voice is thin and Magna's crouch on the floor has become more of a defensive stance. "The fact that we haven't found them yet doesn't mean they don't exist." It's almost like he's pleading, and Tony catches Zorya staring up at him and lowering her brush-tipped ears. "There might be hope yet."

"Maybe. But I'm not going to risk my life crossing the desert to see if there is." She crosses her arms over her chest. "I'm going North," she finishes, and the door closes after her with a grim echo.

\--

"Are you sure?" Fandral asks, frowning. "We all know Loki's not the type to just... Walk across this." They all look down at the 'river' and have to agree it's hard to imagine Loki crossing it out of his own volition. The water is low, only up to knee level probably, but it's also the most unhealthy brown to ever exist and slowly drags pieces of garbage and furniture and _things_.

"Completely." Volstagg nods. "He's trying to disguise his smell, he knows we're after him."

"Perfect." Sif sighs. Up ahead the hill looks empty, but Cariad's nose is the best hint they've got and they're not going to ignore it. "Let's find a ladder or something, Loki might be desperate but I'm not stepping into this shit soup."

In the end they don't find a ladder, but Sif looks down from Jano's back at the three men that groan and carry their daemons on their backs knee-deep in sewer water and smirks her way to the other side, and for the first time in a while she feels a bit like herself.

-

"Here." Sterk says after he's dropped the sealed packages he held in his mouth. There are two bags of dried meat and a bagged loaf of luckily not stale bread. Loki picks them up and stuffs them in the backpack he took from the children aisle, along with the kitchen knives, the six water bottles and energy bars already stuffed there. "I'll go get canned stuff." 

Loki looks up in time to see his tail disappearing behind the shelf, and lets out that breath he never knows he's holding when he looks at his daemon. He hears him rummaging through the cans in the next aisle, all clacking nails and curious sniffs, and he lets himself slip to a sitting position on the floor.

He wonders when he started feeling more comfortable when away from his soul, and then backtracks because he can pinpoint the exact moment and it's no use, crying over spilled milk. He takes a moment to remember _before_ , all those nights spent in companionable silence, all alone but never lonely because all he had to do was hold his daemon in his arms to be home. 

And now he can't even look at him.

He doesn't register Sterk's back until he feels a wet nose digging on his cheek.

"Are you ok?" He whispers, and Loki pushes him off his lap. Sterk lands in a heap on the floor and looks up at him with eyes that remind him of the ones he saw in the mirror every time he went back home because no one wanted to play with 'that weirdo'. His daemon's confusion and hurt send a pang to his chest, but he makes no movement to pick him back up.

"Did you bring the cans?"

"Loki..."

"Come on, I saw a sports store across the street, I want to get a bat or something."

"I am so sorry...." And he tries climbing over him again and Loki feels himself shutting down, trying to block it all out, the apologies he's ignoring and the ones he can't make himself and the bitter taste of guilt that clings to his throat and makes him feel like he's not breathing. "Please..."

"Get off me!" He hops to his feet in one fluid movement, and it's only sheer luck that Sterk lands on his feet. He cowers into a ball with his tail curled between his legs.

Loki stares at him for another moment and he wants to pick him up and hold him close and tell him it's not their fault, that they did what they had to and they don't deserve this, but he just lets out another, shakier breath and stomps off the store.

\--

"What do you think?" Jane asks, smoothing a hand down the feathers on Aster´s back. Darcy picks at the threads on her ragged sheets and avoids her eyes.

"I don´t know." She mutters, and that shyness, that nervousness is so alien to her that Jane wonders what happened to the girl that used to physically drag her away from her papers to drown in a pint of beer or an industrial-sized glass of tequila. And then she remembers she herself can´t sit still in a room if her back is not pressed against a wall.

"We have to decide."

"I know."

They both do.

Steve´s group has been nice to them, but they won´t wait forever.

She clenches her fist in her jacket´s pocket. That´s the quid of the question, the group has been nice to them, and she feels well-rested and well-fed for the first time in weeks. 

She knows what they have to do, and she knows Darcy will go with whatever she decides (because she might be a firework and a rollercoaster of a woman, but when it comes to serious matters Darcy is still the freshman that couldn´t for the life of her find the way to her classroom on her first day), but her voice still trembles when she voices the thought aloud.

Aster pecks the sleeve of the jacket affectionately, and puffs his feathers in the way her father´s daemon used to when they were particularly proud of them, and Jane thinks that maybe they´re taking a step in the right direction after all.

-

"Is everything all right?" Steve is the first to ask, concerned look and everything. A part of Darcy wants to roll her eyes and the other one wants to pinch his cheek. She contains herself, she will have plenty of chances later.

"We have decided what we´re doing." Jane announces.

At the other side of the room Thor tenses and his daemon lets out an anxious screech. It´s a bit cute, thinks Darcy, and a smile has slipped onto her lips before she notices. What she does notice is Jane´s fist clenching again in the pocket of her jacket, that way it does when she´s particularly nervous, and she walks to her side to take her free hand in hers.

"Oh" Steve smiles. "Just... Remember we don´t want to force you to do anything, ok?"

"We know." Jane takes a deep breath and returns the smile, if only a bit harsher than Steve´s. "And we appreciate everything you´ve done for us."

Darcy arches an eyebrow at her friend´s wording, until she catches sight of the way Thor´s face falls like a deflated balloon. Huh, so Jane thinks it´s cute too.  
She contains her laughter as Jane takes another deep breath to create mood, but Thor´s face is too much, and she squeezes her hand when he looks about to turn around and leave the room. Jane smiles again.

"We´d like to stay with you, if that´s all right."

The change is immediate, Thor lights up like a Christmas tree and his daemon takes off to glide an ample circle before returning to her human´s shoulder. Clint and Steve´s daemons let out pleased noises and the leader claps Jane softly on the shoulder.

"Of course it´s all right." His smile this time is blinding, like a child that just received a golden star. "Then it´s decided, we gather provisions tomorrow and take off."

Natasha steps forward with her daemon at her heels.

"I´m sorry." Jane mutters, and only then does Darcy remember yesterday´s discussion.

"It´s fine. You´ll be... safer, with more people." The other woman offers her a dry smile and a hand that Jane shakes before Darcy gets her turn. Then she turns back to the room in general. "I´ll go with you to get my own provisions." She says, and her voice gets harder by the second until it´s like she´s a statue speaking. "I´ll see you to the city border and then I´m out."

And she walks out of the room and takes all the previous cheery mood with her. Steve hesitates but eventually he follows her out and Darcy does roll her eyes this time. Whatever it is that these two have going on, it´s causing an awful lot of drama.

A hand on her shoulder distracts her.

"I´m glad you´re staying." Bruce gives her a tired smile, and Darcy gives him her best one in response.

"Well, we gotta find those dusty science machines, don´t we?" She pokes his cheek.

Ashwa looks so pretty when she laughs.

-

They all know they should be getting as much sleep as they can for the incursion tomorrow, but they just sit and sigh, and the shouting from the bedroom at the end of the hall keeps them all up until morning comes.


	3. Chapter 3

**3**

"Ok guys, once more." Steve mutters as clear as he can without raising his voice. "Thor and Jane, you get the toiletries and medicines. Bruce, Tony and I will get the canned food. Darcy and Natasha, clean clothes and batteries. Clint will get as high up as he can and keep watch. Have you all got your radios? Ammo? We'll look for some more after this, but try not to waste it."

Everyone checks their pockets and belts and weapons and nods after they've made sure they're supplied.

"Let's go then." He takes a deep breath. "Don't take stupid risks, if you get separated and come across one, climb something and call for the others, keep your daemons close, we'll meet here in twenty minutes."

The teams separate immediately, Clint climbs up to the beams crossed in the ceiling, and Apolla perches at some distance, facing the opposite way. He waits until most of them are gone, to reach for Natasha's arm. Zorya looks back at him first, and her eyes are curious and a bit scared, and he draws strength from that lack of hostility to stand the hard, piercing look of her counterpart.

"We're losing time." Is all she says, and she tries to pull herself free, but he can't, can't let those shouted accusations be the last thing between them.

"Please... Think this again." He tries, and it comes out choked but it comes out and it's all that matters. "I don't know if I can do this without you by my side, but what I do know is that I don't _want_ to."

She looks at him for a long moment, and then her lips tighten and she averts his eyes.

"This was going to happen eventually, Steve." She extracts her arm from his grip and moves to follow Darcy. He stays there, frozen, until Bruce comes and pats his arm.

-

"Keep watch, will you? I'll gather as much as I can." Jane shoots a furtive look around before she crouches to get deep into the much ransacked shelves, trying to find even a lonely six pack of toilet paper.

"Got you."

Maybe it's the comfort of not having to look at anyone, but Jane starts talking as soon as she's hidden from view.

"It's nice of you all, to let us stay." She starts. She sees Thor's feet shuffle, hears the slight disturbance in the air when his daemon's wings bat, imagines his anxious expression and smiles.

"There's safety in numbers," he answers after clearing his throat. "It's a little miracle that you both made it this far."

"Well, we had the RV. And we weren't always alone." She pushes empty boxes and other trash aside.

"No?"

"There was another person with us, but we lost him."

"I see..." There are scratching sounds coming from just above her head, so she figures Thor's daemon just landed on top of the shelf. The tips of her fingers touch something solid, and she digs further until she gets her hands on three still whole packages.

"Does it bother you?" She looks up at him, and he gives her a diluted version of his usual smile.

"It makes me sad that you and Darcy lost someone, whoever he was."

She stares at him for a minute longer. "His name was Selvig." Aster lands on her shoulder and squeezes as he nuzzles her cheek. She enjoys the contact before she answers. "He went to get supplies and never came back. His daemon tried to reach us, but she disappeared in front of our eyes. We got out of there as fast as we could."

"Understandable."

"Then we just... Kept traveling. Darcy wanted to find his stepfather, but the house was empty when we got there, he left a note for her, told her he'd gone to look for her stepsister and that they'd meet her back there. She tried calling to his phone for a few days, but he never answered and we had to move on."

Thor meets her eyes and she kind of wishes he'd avoid them, because under his stare she feels exposed and vulnerable, and it's not nearly as uncomfortable as it should be, not with someone she just met. Not with someone like him.

"And you?" He asks.

She shrugs, a bit thankful that he chose this subject to talk about. "My parents have been dead for quite a while. No nasty business, either, just a car accident." Aster takes off to glide a brief circle over their heads, and Thor's daemon watches him and stretches a wing to invite him on the shelf with her. "I had been living with Selvig in the RV when the outbreak happened. He was retired and helping me with one of my projects." She smiles and thinks back at those nights sitting outside the vehicle, looking up at the night sky and watching the stars disappear behind Aster's dark form as he flew over them, and Selvig's Nienna telling them stories about naughty Raven and how he brought fire to Men and charred himself in the process, and she listened with a smile in her lips and a warm mug in her hands, and how in those moments she could almost remember what it felt like to be a child. "He... He was-"

"You don't have to tell me." Thor intervenes quickly, and his eyes the color of the summer sky have darkened over in worry. "You don't owe me anything, Jane."

"I know. I'm sharing this with you." She swallows the bitter bile of the past before smiling. "You make me feel safe."

Thor's face lights up like the sun and his daemon tears through the silence with an anxious caw. Aster clacks his beak in that way Jane knows means he's laughing.

"Thank you."

"Don't be so happy, you'll have to tell me something next." Jane smirks. "Selvig was the closest thing I had to a father after my parents died. And he died trying to keep me and Darcy out of danger."

He allows a respectful silence after her words, before he smirks.

"And then you decided to go into that drugstore alone, very reasonable." He says. Jane looks over and his daemon is nuzzling Aster's side, so she rolls her eyes and lets it slip.

"Please, Vita and I had it all under control." She throws back. "Now that you mention drugstores, come on, we still have to visit the medicine aisle." She hands him the toilet paper packages and marches down the aisle, accompanied by the flapping of two sets of wings.

"Thanks for telling me this-"

"What about you-" they talk over each other, and over their heads their daemons touch the tips of each other's feathers in mid-flight.

"What were you asking?" Thor gives in with a smile, and Jane mirrors him.

"Just that. I've told you how it went for me. What about you?" Jane asks. Aster cries out a greeting to Clint's daemon. "I hope it doesn't sound too morbid, what with the death omen daemon and everything but, have you lost someone?"

Thor's smile doesn't vanish, only becomes saddened, like the memories the question brings forth are too sweet to forget them but also too painful to keep close at all times.

"I know I have. I just wish I knew more, you know?" He starts. "I tried calling everyone, but the calls never made it through. I was with Steve at the time so we just rounded the gang up and got on the move, the only thing I know for certain is that both my parents are dead, but my brother isn't." There's a storm behind his eyes and Jane can almost see it, the struggle to not just drop everything and go running to find this man that is probably all he has left.

"How are you so sure?" She asks, facing the shelf to avoid looking at directly at him, and she pulls out a medicine box to check its labels.

"Don't laugh." He says as he crouches to check some bottles.

"I won't, promise."

Thor looks up at her and he's blushing, but his face is serious.

"I felt a pull."

"Oh..." She answers plainly. The silence quickly grows awkward, and she adds. "I-"

"I know it's not... I know most people think it's just a tale, but I swear on Lys I felt it, ok?" He interrupts her, and moves a few steps down the aisle. Jane follows him.

"No, I was going to say... I don't know if I felt it, you know? I was too young at the time of my parents' deaths." She does not mention she's always frowned at the notion. The only scientifically proven Pull is that which occurs when one is too far from one's daemon. Sure, there are piles and piles of people who claim to have experienced a similar sensation when a directly related family member (like parents, siblings or offspring) has just died, but it's always been considered weak testimonies at best, since the sources are too emotionally unstable to give sturdier declarations. "What was it like?"

Thor stares at her for a moment, like he's evaluating her truthfulness, and then looks back to the shelf. "It was like... It was as if a part of me no longer existed, as if it had been ripped from me. It felt like the daemon pull, only stronger."

"And how did you know it wasn't your brother?"

"I... I just felt it and I knew, Jane, I don't know how to explain it." And here he smiles again, this time a bit brighter, and much fonder. "If I had to guess, I'd say I knew because I'm pretty sure a petty thing like a zombie apocalypse wouldn't be enough to take Loki down."

-

Sterk hasn't said a thing in two days.

Loki sees him dragging his paws over the ground and tripping over them more often than not, and the way his tail sweeps behind him, creating a trail of removed dirt. He wonders if he looks just as lonely and defeated.

"We're getting closer." He mutters, as if he's talking to himself (which in a way, he is) and Sterk's head shoots up so fast he thinks something must've snapped.

"We are. I can feel them." Sterk whispers back, his ears and whiskers are twitching and Loki feels a pang of guilt at the sight of a daemon so starved for attention that he thrives at a mere phrase partially aimed his way. "I wonder if they feel us going to them."

"I doubt it. They probably have more important things to worry about." Loki shrugs. "I hope he's still with his friends. It'll make everything easier."

They go in silence for another couple meters.

"So you weren't lying. About what you said to Sif." He can hear Sterk's voice trying to stay indifferent and aloof, but his ears are pushed back and his eyes are back on the ground. And then, after another block. "I wish we were still with our friends."

Loki wants to snap at him. What friends? The hunting dogs behind them are Thor's pack, not theirs, no matter how much they try, how much they _wish_. No matter how much he and Fandral waved at each other when they crossed at campus, how many times he'd sit in silence with Hogun when they were younger and kicked out of every game, or how much he spoke of Sif to people, it doesn't matter. They are with him only because he can take them to Thor. Anansi is dead and Eris is too and the fact that he can't forget the last time he saw their faces is a perpetual weight on his chest.

"We will be. Soon." He says instead.

His daemon sighs, and they keep walking, silent once more.

-

"Is it too heavy? Are you alright?" Steve asks, careful to aim his questions at Bruce as he passes him another handful of canned beans.

Bruce waits until his daemon nods to answer. "We're ok." He stuffs the cans in the tarp fashioned like a saddle on Ashwa's back. "How about you?" He asks back. Out the corner of his eye he notices Magna shifting to look at them.

"I'm..." Steve tries, and then he just turns back to the shelf to get an armload of goods. Ashwa headbutts Bruce´s hand, and he shrugs at her in response.

"We don't have to talk about it, if you don't want to." Bruce offers at last. "We just care that you're..." He pauses. "Not in mortal danger, at least."

"It's nice to know." Steve smiles at him over his shoulder. "I just... I can't really believe she's leaving, you know? And over something as stupid as... Argh!" He aims a kick at a lonely can on the floor and sends it flying all the way to the end of the aisle. Magna gives a low growl from deep in her throat and hops on top of the shelf to pace its length, her tail whipping behind her. "I just don't get her."

Bruce shrugs. "Natasha is a mystery, we all knew that from the start." He takes the cans from Steve's arms and loads them on the saddle. "Have you tried getting Clint to talk to her?"

"I don't want Clint to talk to her!"

"Magna, sweetie, you're glowing." They all hear Cole's voice, and look up to find her sitting at the corner of the shelf the wildcat is pacing, doing an Oscar-worthy impression of the Cheshire Cat.

"Not a good time, Cole. Leave her alone." Ashwa warns and walks up to them, but is unable to stand on two legs because of her load of cans.

"Not a good time? If I kept quiet every time Magna's not in the mood, I'd never speak agai-" She doesn't get to finish her phrase, because Magna knocks her off the shelf with a well aimed slap of a paw. Tony, who's just turning around the corner into their aisle, catches her on the crook of the elbow of the hand he's not using to hold his shirt up to his chest.

"Excuse her, she's an ass." He smirks. When he walks up to them, Bruce notices he's using his shirt to carry as many cans of tuna as he can. "What were you saying, Stevie?"

"She's only an ass because you're an ass." Steve gives Tony a resentful look just as Bruce gives him a reproachful glare as the shorter man starts taking cans off his shirt. "I don't want Clint to talk to her. I want that _she_ trusts me enough to tell me things herself! We're-" he cuts himself right on time, and Bruce sighs and shakes his head, willing to give him a free pass. Of course, unfortunately for Steve, Tony's got no such qualms.

"Really? You're not going to say it?" He arches an eyebrow and lets Cole slip to the floor.

"Say what?" Steve asks rather abruptly, and if Magna were a real wildcat, Bruce would be pissing himself at the sight she makes looming over Tony like he's a specially delicious-looking mouse.

"Listen bud.... We know. We all know, we have known for months." Tony crosses his arms after Bruce has taken the last of the cans. "You could only come out of each other's bedrooms in the middle of the night so many times before we started suspecting. We were wondering why none of you ever said anything about it."

For a spare second it looks like Steve is contemplating how well Tony would look were he forcibly shoved into the shelf, but then he recovers , and turns his back on them.

"She didn't want anyone to know." He mutters. "Actually, I think Clint's the only person she ever said it to." He stills and Magna hops down to butt her head against his hand, until he's treading his fingers through the thick fur.

"Remind me to thank her for the vote of trust before she leaves, then." Tony rolls his eyes.

"Don't feel so offended." Steve gives a saddened smile, and Bruce edges forward tentatively, but in the end he has no clue of what to do to make his friend feel better. "I get the feeling I wouldn't have been notified that we were together either if she could have avoided it."

"What's her problem?" Bruce asks, and, much to his surprise, Tony answers first.

"Isn't it obvious?" He picks up Cole again and drapes her over his shoulders like a sand-colored scarf. "Pepper's her problem."

Ashwa growls sadly and looks pointedly at the sandcat on Tony's shoulders, but she won't look back at her. Bruce holds back a sigh because he just knows Tony wouldn't like to hear it.

Steve, meanwhile, frowns. "I... No? We were together long before Pepper."

"But she always knew something like that would happen, didn't she?" Tony turns as if to keep watch on the end of the aisle, and Bruce sees the way Cole's claws are digging into his shirt. "She told me once or twice."

Steve takes a step towards him, and Magna comes with him. Her tail has stopped swishing, and her steps are cautious. "Told you what?"

"How useless it was?" Tony turns again, and shrugs. "I thought she was bitter and crazy at the time, but now that I think about it she's got it pretty right. I mean, compromising was hardly worth it before, but now we're literally a second away from dying at every given time."

"So?" 

"Enjoying the ride with no strings attached is much better. Just... It's stupid to plan forward, you know?"

"Well, now _I_ think you're bitter and crazy."

-

"This is just... How on earth did he cover so much distance on foot so fast?" Sif exclaims. "I still say he hid somewhere and we're following a false trail."

"Impossible." Volstagg's beard rubs against his wide chest as he shakes his head. "He would have to have sent Sterk away from him, and even for Loki's range this is too much."

"Maybe he's feeling Thor's closer." Hogun ventures. At his side, Sif sighs.

"I hope so. I think I speak for all of us when I say we've got our hands a bit too full with him."

"It's weird, you know?" Fandral interjects. Hir is perched on his shoulder (the fact that she's too big a bird for the position seems to bother none of them) and she hides her head under her wing when he starts talking. "Even with Loki, it used to be easier. Something's wrong with him."

"You don't say." Sif rolls her eyes.

"I mean something _other_ than the obvious, Sif."

"Like?" She questions again, and Fandral passes a hand over the soft plumage of his daemon, like he's reassuring himself that she's still there.

"It's got something to do with Sterk." He ventures. "Loki has never hidden his daemon, he's never hidden who he is. Something happened that he's not telling us, and it's wearing him thin."

They all walk in silence for a while, each of them pondering their theories. The first to talk (a good three streets after) is Volstagg.

"He wasn't dating anyone when all this happened, was he?" He directs his question at Fandral, who shakes his head. There had been a guy, he had a white horse daemon nearly taller than a car and he walked everywhere with his hand on Loki's waist and Loki's coyote lying across the horse's back with an easy sort of confidence, but that had been long, long ago and Sterk had only hidden out of sight for three days after the guy went away.

"No one serious, not that I know of. I did see him with a girl a couple times when I went clubbing, but he didn't introduce us, so I figure it was something casual." He shrugs. "I guess he must be pretty upset about his friends, but he speaks normally about that, so I doubt that's it."

"He speaks normally of everything that's not his daemon." This time it's Hogun who speaks. "When he was with us he kept looking over his shoulder every two steps. I think he was making sure Sterk was following."

"I tried to ask him" Volstagg adds "Once or twice, he always told me some evasive shit and then went away."

Sif sighs again, and keeps her gaze fixed on the white bush of Cari's tail ahead. "Well, that's little Loki for you." The others grunt in response, and she smiles. There's a reason why dealing with Loki has always been Thor's job, and even then, it has always been risky business.

The two brothers used to come to blows more often than not, and it was their mother's job to break it apart. She smiles, as she remembers the thin and regal-looking woman standing between her sons like she didn't care at all that she barely reached past their chests. If Frigga were here, she'd know what's wrong with Loki right away, she thinks, and her smile first vanishes and then comes back, only a bit sadder, because she can picture it perfectly, her Seidr dragging Sterk out of wherever he's been hiding all this time, the coyote leaning down so that the fox can bite on the scruff of his neck without much effort, and Loki looking down sheepishly at his queen of a mother.

She stops walking so suddenly that Fandral slams against her back, and Hir has to throw herself to the ground to keep from touching her. 

"What happened?" Volstagg asks after he's undone the couple steps he'd walked before he noticed they had stopped.

Sif feels a bit dizzy with the guilt at her realization because _she should've known_ , she had _found_ him in the remnants of his house, for God's sake.

"Does anyone know what happened to his parents?" She turns around and sees the horrible suspicion dripping into their faces like cold water. "I found him at his house, but it was empty and... And he said nothing."

"That can't be it." Fandral shakes his head, but everyone can see he's doing it more to convince himself than anyone else. "It can't, Loki would be absolutely broken if his parents had died." 

"It doesn't have to be visible, though." Volstagg mutters, and when they look at him there's a haunted expression in his eyes, which he averts from everyone. Sif clenches her fists tight, and chooses instead to watch as their daemons move to cuddle around Cariad, but no one says a thing. No one mentions their names, or how young he was, how _small_ compared to his father, how she was just a few years away from finishing elementary school. Not how their faces lit up when their "aunt" and "uncles" went to visit. No one mentions _her_ , and her chubby and tiny hands grabbing on Volstagg's as they both choked tears back and their little girl walked into kindergarten for the first time.

"Volstagg..." Fandral edges forward, but Volstagg shakes his head.

"I'm fine. Or as fine as can be." He shrugs. "I felt closer than ever to Cari when it happened, I wouldn't have hidden her, but who knows? If one of them was bitten... It's not a pretty sight. Maybe he's trying to protect Sterk by keeping him away."

Sif bites her lip, tries to hold it back, but in the end she has to know. "Before, when Loki said Thor might have been bitten already... You said he'd have felt it, just like you did." He's turning paler by the second, and she already regrets asking. "... You know what? Forget-"

"It was Flosi." Volstagg interrupts her. There's a heavy thud behind them, confirming that Jano has dropped to the ground and is watching Cari as if his life depended on it. The dog's ears are drooped and she's emitting a low whine, but Hogun's snow leopard pushes against her, like a cat looking for cuddles, and she finally lays next to the horse daemon and licks a stripe up his cheek. Volstagg, meanwhile, gives Sif a painful smile. "You would think the blood loss or the severing would've killed her, being so small, but she was always strong." He says. Absolutely no one cares that his voice is fraying at the end. "Hilde was trying to restrain her when I got to the house, to keep her away from Rolfe... From Rolfe's body."

He says nothing afterward, and no one asks either. They just inch closer until they're all touching Volstagg in some way, and just stand there, in silence. Trying not to think of the three bodies wrapped in sheets that rot away in an abandoned house and in a broken man's heart.

\--

They hear Apolla screaming a spare second before Clint does.

She doesn't know (and frankly doesn't care either, at least not right now) if Darcy is following her when she shoots down the aisle with Zorya by her heels and she doesn't know whether she wants to run to the store's entrance or to the canned food aisle.

Natasha's heart unclenches somewhat when she catches the familiar expanse of tan fur that is Magna, and Steve, Bruce and Tony come running right after. Ashwa's saddles are hastily tied closed and bulging with cans, but there are more important things to think about now than whether or not they'll hold.

"Clint?" She asks, her eyes fixed on the criss-crossed beams of the ceiling, but there's no answer. "Clint!?" Silence. She heads for the ladder built into the wall, the one he used to climb up, but then there's a warm weight on her shoulder

"You can't get Zorya up there." Steve says gently.

"And what do you suggest?" Natasha shakes his hand off and gives him a cold glare. Tony or Darcy could climb while carrying their daemons, but she doesn't trust their balance once up there.

Thor and Jane choose that very moment to run in, with their daemons soaring over their heads. Steve's face lightens up.

"Thor, Jane, can any of you climb a bit and see if you can see Clint and Apolla?" He asks, and Thor's face hardens in worry.

"I'm on it." Thor takes a step towards the wall and then Jane's hand is softly poised on his forearm, stilling him.

"I'm going to take a guess here, but I don't think that thing will hold your weight." She says and points at the places in which the rusty ladder has already torn from the wall. "I'll go." She shrugs. "In the worst of cases, you and Steve can catch me."

"We'll be down here." Thor nods and moves forward again.

Jane takes a hold of the first step of the ladder and she's suddenly half-way up, and Natasha is left wondering where did that scrawny, malnourished girl get that skill from. Her daemon -Aster, she reminds herself- flies around her as she climbs, and drifts away on an impressive ten feet ratio once she's stepped onto the beam.

"Do you see anything?" Natasha asks once Jane takes a tentative step forward. Thor and Steve pace under her, their arms tense and their eyes focused on her form.

"... There are no zombies in here... But I don't see Clint either." Jane calls down. Natasha frowns; if there hadn't been any zombies then there's no reason for Clint to have abandoned his post. The store is silent, and the tension in the air has the coppery taste of fear. Up above them, by the corner of her eye, Natasha spots movement, and her stomach sinks like a stone in water.

"BEHIND YOU!" She screams, and Jane stops and turns in time to see the man running on the beam towards her a spare second before he clamps his hand down on her forearm. Darcy screams something unintelligible so hard it has to hurt her still damaged throat, Natasha herself is pushed back against the young girl hastily before she can even move, and her mind is a noisy chaos of _They took Clint, they have him, what did they do to him?!_

The ladder creaks and sprinkles rust and wall pieces as it's suddenly burdened with Steve and Magna's combined weight, but they won't reach her, not in time, the man is already pulling Jane towards a hole in the wall none of them had noticed before, covered as it was by a dirty piece of canvas. 

Jane punches her captor's arm and tries to trip him, and the man seems to have enough because he stops and raises a hand in the air with the clear intention of striking her across the face... And then Aster is there, clawing at the man's eyes and slapping his face with his wings.

Tony lets out a choked gasp by her side, but if Jane is in any way disturbed at having her daemon touch someone else, she doesn't show it. Instead, she hooks her leg behind the man's, and gives him a well aimed push to the chest that has him toppling over the edge.

A small green lizard lands hard on the floor and turns to golden dust a second before her human falls down on top of her.

Jane pants from her perch on the beam, but not a moment later the canvas is being pushed open and there's a lioness daemon coming at her, preceding two screaming men.

Steve reaches the top of the ladder at right that moment, but one of the men stays back to try to wrestle him back down while the other keeps on inching towards...

"JANE!" This time Darcy does manage to articulate her friend's name, but there's no way to know whether it's a hopeless warning about the danger ahead, or a 'Jane just what the fuck are you doing throwing yourself off the beam?!' kind of scream. They watch in frozen shock as the brunette descends in a wide arch towards Thor's extended arms.

He bends down nearly all the way down to the floor as he absorbs the impact of Jane's fall, but he bounces back right away and drops her gently on the floor. Up on the beam Steve has managed to crawl up into steadier ground and is dispatching punches back and forth against the strange men. Natasha's fists tighten at her sides when she notices Magna is struggling to hold her weight in three paws and a rusty ladder while she uses the remaining one to bat the lioness' strikes away from her face. If she slips, if the other daemon topples her over... 

Thor seems to be thinking the same, because he rushes to the ladder as well. His eagle soars up as high as she can and pecks at the lioness' paws and muzzle, in an attempt to buy enough time for Magna to climb up fully. Only when he's in no danger of having a daemon land on him does Thor take hold of the first step of the ladder, but it tears almost entirely off the wall and ends up hanging precariously from an unreliable-looking scrap of metal.

The last of it feels like it happens in slow motion.

There's a sound of glass breaking. 

Natasha turns in time to see the first bloodied, glass-pierced hand push through the store's back door and head straight for the handle. That's got to be the thing she hates the most about them -she thinks in an odd moment of detachment- the way they retain most of their muscular memory. The handle turns and creaks, and they're pushing through not a moment after, ten or so of them, bloody and pale and with festering wounds on every visible inch of skin.

She shoots the first one in the chest, and then aims upwards, but Steve and Magna are too close for her to shoot without endangering them, so she points back at the zombies. Zorya retreats behind her, and she takes a look around to make sure the others' daemons are safe.

Lys and Aster are still in the air, as long as they can keep up flying there's no need to fear for them. Vita and Cole are nowhere to be seen, so she figures they've crawled into their humans' clothes, but there's no way to cover Ashwa, much less with the heavy saddles slowing her down.

"Tony! Get Bruce and Ashwa to the car!" She yells. Thor stands at her side with his trusted aluminum bat. "You'd do better covering them." She mutters.

"It'll be faster if I help you, we have to get to Steve." He grunts back, and lifts his weapon.

Natasha nods. "On my mark." She whispers in the vague direction of the others. "Go!" And she shoots again, this time a clean shot on the head of the one who had taken a wobbly step towards her. There are footsteps behind her, the screech of the double glass doors, -long since immobile due to the lack of electricity- being hastily pushed open, and two loud bangs, presumably from Tony's own gun.

If they're surrounded...

Thor bats away like it's nothing, ripping heads and breaking limbs to turn the bodies into useless immobile lumps on the floor, and Lys flies lower every now and then, to distract the mass of writhing monsters away from the humans. Natasha can still hear Steve and Magna struggling with the men up on the beam, and that thought alone keeps her rooted to the spot.

They have to finish this, and then they can find a way to get up there in time to help Steve, and use those two bastards to find out what they did to Clint.

She shoots and kicks and dodges almost automatically, moving as much as she can in the three feet ratio around the shelf Zorya has chosen to climb over, and every time a zombie goes down its body thuds dryly and the sound turns into muted cries of _"Clint, Clint, Clint"_ in her head.

The front doors explode inwards, showering everyone with a decent amount of crushed glass and dust. Thor throws himself off the way into one of the aisles, and Natasha manages to climb onto the shelf with her daemon. The front end of the RV is as far as it'll go through the remnants of the crystal doors, and they can see at least a dozen bodies underneath. Tony rolls down a window.

"This place is crawling, come on!" He yells, and looks up. "Steve, get your ass down- where's Steve?!"

Natasha's head snaps up and all she can do when her eyes land on the empty space where the three struggling men should be is restrain the furious scream in her throat and let herself be pulled down from the shelf. Lys nudges Zorya down as well, and they make their way to the open RV door, even as more zombies try to make their way through on both sides of it.

"Where's the door to the roof?" She asks, clipped, as soon as the door has safely closed behind them. Jane looks up at her in surprise, and then at both Tony and Bruce, doubtful. "We're not driving out without them, where's the door to the roof?!" Natasha demands again, this time screaming. If she can get to the roof then maybe they can reach the beams and go through the hole in the wall...

"Get us out of here." Thor speaks behind her.

"You're not suggesting-" she begins hissing, but he cuts her in the middle of it.

"I'm not suggesting anything, we're getting out of here." His usually affable eyes are steel-hard and his mouth is pressed into a thin line. Lys has perched on the tabletop behind him and her open wings are so big they make him look like some kind of avenging angel. "The place is full of zombies, and we're no help for either of them if we get ourselves severed. We better retreat and find another way in, and we better do it now." He directs the last, rough word at Darcy, and the woman clenches to the wheel and slams down on the gas pedal without the smallest hesitation.

Zorya pushes Cole aside to get to the back of the RV, and Natasha follows her daemon. The vehicle shakes and swerves as it pushes bodies off the way and runs over them a second after, and the screams the damned monsters let out are blood chilling, and she's suddenly aware that these are _human beings_ they're killing without a moment's thought. When the noise stops, there's not even the usual satisfaction of escaping with their lives, not the smiles and the pats in the back and the desperate hugs. She looks around and finds blank faces and shaking hands, and she knows the screams didn't just affect her.

"Stop here." Thor instructs again. He's gotten his face under control even if his fists are clenched white and his daemon's feathers are all fluffed up, making her look twice as big. Darcy stops the car in the loading area, and there's a fire escape on the wall in a slightly better condition than the one in the store. "Natasha, you and I go through the roof and into the second floor. No one goes out, keep the roof door open and if another horde comes down on you I want you out of here and back to the building, we'll meet with you there. Understood?"

No one speaks, and the way they look at them with saddened eyes that are immediately averted is unnerving. 

"Understood?" Thor repeats, slightly harsher this time.

"We get it, Thor, you're going on a suicidal mission." Finally, Tony responds, rolling his eyes and holding his hands up in a placating gesture. Then, he steps forward and hands Natasha his gun. "We'll wait for you here for as long as we can. Now go get our idiots back."

Despite the gravity of the situation, she gives him a half smile. "They can't hide hard enough from me."

-

A rush of cold air hits them full in the face as soon as they step out into the roof of the RV. The sky hasn't yet closed off with heavy grey clouds, but it's on its way. He holds back a sigh. Rain is nasty, it makes people tired and clumsy, but it doesn't stop the zombies in the slightest.

The fire escape is nine or so feet from the roof, and Thor turns back to Natasha.

"Do you want a push up?" He asks, although he has no idea how to get Zorya up there without touching her, but of course Natasha doesn't wait to answer his question like a normal person.

She crouches next to her daemon and races towards the wall, and a person her size definitely shouldn't be able to jump that high, but she manages. Zorya ends up hanging with her front legs on the ladder and her left hind leg with its claws sunken deep into Natasha's thigh.

Thor winces, but Natasha only clenches harder to the ladder and lifts her leg to help her daemon safely up. The lynx begins climbing immediately after with her human right on cue.

The moment he grabs the ladder himself, it's as if he's a child again, climbing up to the treehouse after Loki. Sterk used to climb as a squirrel, but Lys never did like smaller forms, and they didn't discover their passion for flight until way into their teens, so he always ended up pushing some heavy beast onto the wooden boards while his little brother laughed at him.

Lys flies around him, keeping watch as he climbs, and Thor is grateful. With his mind this far back in the past he can't be of much help to anyone. The memories are distracting, yes, but they're a welcomed change from the ever-present chorus of "Loki is alive", "What if he's hurt?" and "Why are you not looking for him?!" that's become almost incapacitating. 

Then he reaches the top of the ladder and pushes the door Natasha left ajar behind her, and everything flees his mind.

It looks like a storage room and an office fused together, crates and boxes of food and hygiene products cracked open and mingling with desks and papers. Everything's covered in some kind of hair and it smells strongly of animals.

"Someone has been living here." He mutters. "A big group, judging on all that food."

"Well, not anymore." Lys replies, and perches down on one of the crates as her sharp eyes scan the room. There's a sleeping bag hastily thrown on the floor, and the remnants of a broken coffee mug. Some of the boxes are turned over, and one of the desks has been pushed aside, creating an arch in the dusty carpet. All in all, it's pretty obvious that someone just made an emergency take off. "Serves them right, if they attacked people like they attacked us."

"We walked into their shelter, thoug-" He tries, but she cuts him off with a snap of her beak.

"That's even worse! What gives them the right to claim a place that's necessary for everyone? Fine, live in the damned store, but let people take what you don't need!" She snaps. Thor rolls his eyes, but eventually all their fights come down to him realizing he's just trying to ignore his voice of reason, and this one is not different. He runs a hand down her side, to flatten her feathers back to their place, and turns to give another look around.

"Natasha?"

"I'm here." She answers from a corner of the room. Turns out it's the other side of the canvas-covered hole. There's a body at her feet and Thor has a spare moment to wonder when that stopped being shocking to him. Instead, he takes a deep, relaxing breath after he recognizes the body's size and shape as neither Steve's nor Clint's, and steps forward.

"What happened?" He asks.

"Well, that's just what our friend here was about to tell us." She kicks the limp body, and much to Thor's surprise, it emits a low groan.

He takes a closer look. The man is in his mid thirties, with a short beard and brown hair and a quickly blackening eye. "How are you even alive if the zombies got up here?"

The man looks up at him, and then averts his eyes. At his side, Natasha hums sweetly.

"I'm afraid that's not going to cut it... Zorya?" 

Thor looks at the daemon in question as Lys lands next to her. The lynx is crouched on a corner of the room, with a thick green rope-y thing held between her fangs and under her right paw. As he stares, she bites down on it, and the man gives a whine of pain, and that's when it rains down on him what the thing actually is.

"Let go of her!" Lys demands indignantly. "Zorya! Are you crazy?!"

Zorya lets go of the snake daemon's body -her fangs have left puncture marks overflowing with golden dust- but keeps her head under her paw. "He's going to tell us what happened here. If I like his answer, I might not throw her off the beam as her friends tried to do with Magna."

Thor feels his whole body tense up, and he can feel how much Lys wants to wrestle the other daemon free, because even for scum like this, messing with someone's daemon is another level entirely. However, Steve and Clint weigh like stones on his chest.

He crouches next to the man.

"Listen, I'd tell her what she wants to know. I don't really approve of this, but you and your friends kind of messed up with the wrong person at the worst of times."

The man's eyes stay averted and then, after what Thor can only assume is another encouraging bite from Zorya, looks back at them.

"The zombies didn't get here." He starts in a raspy voice

"Then?" Natasha's eyes narrow dangerously.

"We thought the one with the falcon daemon was knocked out, but he was just pretending to be." He retakes his story. "When we were bringing the other in, he just... Sprang at us. He killed one of us..."

"And?"

"I don't know, ok?! The big one knocked me out and I woke up just now with this bitch-" His words melt into a scream when Zorya pulls at his daemon's body. "Just let me go!"

"Why did you take him in the first place?" Natasha asks next. The guy spits at her, and tries to crawl away, but all it earns him is a kick to the face and a bite to the daemon. "I thought we were getting somewhere... Do I have to do that again?"

This time the man takes a lot longer to answer, and when he does, his face has emptied of all fight, and his mouth twists into a frown.

"To feed the dogs."

"... Dogs?" Thor asks, puzzled, and the man glares up at him from behind swollen eyelids.  
"They have no daemons, they're practically invisible to them, and they tear them to pieces before they even process what's going on." He shrugs. "They need a special diet to keep them feral enough... Not exactly what you find in a store like this." Thor can't feel his clenched hands anymore and Natasha's gun hand is visibly shaking.

"You feed your dogs people?" Thor asks, just to give the guy a chance to take it back, to clarify, because there _can't_ be people like this in the world, not when they should all be helping each other, not when his little brother is out there alone.

The guy grins again. "In our defense, we make them last. You'd be surprised how many times you can feed three dogs with a well built man. And as long as you keep them alive and well fed, you can even get enough blood for little treats here and there. And when they're more bone than meat, you tie them up nice and you got yourself a nice distraction to get out of town unnotic-"

There's a bang, and the man's head bounces grotesquely off the floor, before a small dark puddle begins spreading under it.

On the corner, Zorya spits golden dust and hisses. "I hate the taste when they die." She mutters. Lys hops her way to Thor's side, and he picks her up. She's too shaken to fly, and she trembles a bit in his arms.

"They're fine." He pushes through his closed throat, almost automatically. "They're fine, Natasha. They have to be, they killed one of this bastards and escaped." He looks at the woman. She's paler than usual, and her green eyes are wide and unfocused. "They're out there."

"Yes. Yes, they are." The little seconds it takes her to answer feel like an eternity. "And we're not leaving this city until we find them." She looks up, and Thor thinks to himself that he'd rather fight his way through a hundred hordes in a row than get into Natasha's way.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS FIC IS STILL ALIVE, PLEASE READ AUTHOR NOTES

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off I'm really sorry for the delay to anyone who's still actively following this! The fix is NOT getting abandoned, I just hit a bit of a weird spot in life and have been adjusting, but damn I missed writing.
> 
> Now on to the real notes.
> 
>  **This chapter contains character death** , it's at the very end and I'm very sorry. It's none of the characters on the shipping list if it makes you feel any better.  
>  **This chapter contains mentions of past rape, kidnapping, self-harm and violence** , if you are triggered or bothered by any of those PLEASE skip from "Why are you not with the others?" to "Do you think they're still alive?". Stay safe readers, I love you.  
>  **This chapter IMPLIES (not mentions or describes) sexual abuse from an adult against an underage character** If this bothers or triggers you in any way PLEASE skip frim "You look different" to "Can I ask you something?"
> 
> All of these **will be explained without any specifics** at the ending author notes.

**4**

Before he settled, Sterk was a pretty versatile daemon.

He'd choose bigger, fiercer forms whenever they had to mingle with other kids, and Loki remembers the feeling of power that came from strutting down the playground with a tiger at his side, and competing with Thor and their friends to see whose daemon could be the most menacing. No one messed with a group of kids like that, especially after witnessing Lys and Jano attempting to claw each other's eyes out over a simple 'you could be the princess because you're the prettiest, Sif' matter.

When they were alone, however, everything was free game.

He'd find an empty corner of the park and run as fast as he could with his arms spread and Sterk trailing behind as a seagull, or undress down to his underwear and hop on the back of a small hippo to wade through the mossy pond. Even now, he's able to describe the feeling of freedom as the moment he poked his head through the top of a young oak tree and watched the sunset with his daemon coiled loosely around his neck.

"What are you thinking about?" Comes a shy, almost fearful question from the front basket of the stolen bike.

"Nothing." He answers automatically.

"Huh, then we need to find an eye doctor, because it's the third time you've nearly ran over a corpse." Sterk remairks dryly -a memory hits him square on the face, of those times when he got into fights with Thor over nothing, and Sterk refused to talk to him until he apologized to his brother- He stops pedaling to look down and only then does he notice his daemon's lean paws pushing down on one side of the handlebars.

"Well it's not like they can feel a thing, is it?" He stares down with an equal lack of emotion.

Sterk holds up the challenge for a few seconds, but he eventually sighs and shakes his head. "Let me help you, Loki."

"Oh but you _are_ helping me, you've been doing a great job of it." It's a perverse satisfaction, the way Sterk's ears bend down and he averts his eyes. Deep down Loki knows what he's doing is just nasty, but this is the closest he can me get to hurting himself in a situation in which he needs to be as physically functional as possible, if only up until they find Thor.

"I..."

"Just keep your eyes on the road, I'm doing all the work anyways." Is all he says before he resumes pedaling. At this rate Volstagg and the others have probably lost their trail, and he's thankful as ever to have found this slightly wrecked up treasure under the gray-skinned remnants of what once must've been a young woman.

Sterk keeps silent, and turns around to keep watching the street, and Loki feels their bond straining even further, the feeling intense as it hadn't been since he was a teenager and pushing the covers away to stand from his bed was just _too much_ , and his daemon would curl up and just stay there, until Thor came to ask if they were ready for school and he and Lys ended up crawling under the blankets with them.

This time he has none of that, though.

His daemon is a thorn in his side, and Thor and Lys are miles and miles away, so he has to hold up for himself.

"Do you remember the oak tree?" He asks, before he can stop himself. Sterk's ears perk up and his stomach clenches painfully.

"The one in the park?"

"That one."

A whole street goes by, and Loki knows Sterk is remembering the very same sunset.

"I should've stayed as a snake." He comments, and curls tighter into the basket, as if to try and hide as much of himself as possible.

"Venomous animals are too obvious." Loki shakes his head.

"Aso was a spider." Sterk objects, and Loki smiles.

"Anansi had no sense of subtlety." He sends a silent apology to his friend because he might love him as a brother but he was as discreet as a punch to the face. "And before you start with Eris, Neikea didn't _look_ venomous, she just was."

"Just like her human." He can hear the smile in Sterk's voice, but by the time he speaks again, it has faded. "I miss them."

It's just then that Loki realizes he just had a conversation with his daemon, and he nearly stops the bike again. Instead he pedals harder, because that's life for him, isn't it? If he stops when he feels like he can't possibly take another step, then he'll never get up again, so he keeps crawling towards the end line.

"They would've known what to do." He mutters. 

"Or at least they would've known how to make us feel better about it." Sterk adds, making himself smaller in the basket once more.

And that they would have. And maybe then Loki wouldn't feel like throwing up every time he looked at his soul, maybe he wouldn't feel the need to end everything as soon as he made sure Thor was relatively safe.

It's ironic, how everything he loves ultimately comes to hurt him more than anything else.

\--

"We have to go back." Thor tries. Again.

"There's still light." Natasha mutters from a few feet over. The street is very much empty, save for the two of them. 

"There won't be any by the time we get there." He rolls his eyes, and watches in fond irritation as Lys glides down to peck at Zorya's ears. The lynx bats at her with a paw, but she flutters back up into his shoulder. "We won't be of any help to them if we get ambushed."

"I doubt we'll get a sudden horde so soon, it's only been a week"

"We thought the same at the store, didn't we?" He frowns. "They're getting bolder"

Natasha groans and turns to him, her arms crossed and an exasperated frown in her face.

"Thor, you're an amazing friend, but you're also the worst mother hen I've ever met, considering how easily you go around kicking zombies in the face. A bit hypocritical, if you ask me."

"It took us long, but we've learned to put or friends' safety before anything else."

"Whatever, you're the worst second in command." She huffs. "I don't understand how Steve puts up with you."

Thor snickers at that. "Maybe that's why I'm not his second in command, you are."

"For all the good it did to him." She turns again, her shoulders a bit lower, tenser.

"... Listen, I..." Thor starts, and stops short because he has no idea of what to say. Loki's disappointed voice comes from deep within his memory _'You may have a heart of gold, but your words are soft as barbed wire, so what good is it to you, in the end?'_

"Huh?"

"... Nothing, just..." He fidgets a bit with his hands. Lys nibs affectionately on his ear; he has hurt people he loves with his words, but he's never meant to, and that _has_ to count for something, right? "I know we're not Clint and Apolla... But we're here, if you ever need us."

"We know how you feel." Lys adds from his shoulder, looking at Zorya. Natasha arches an eyebrow.

"I thought you and Jane..." She shakes her head. "I thought you were over Sif already."

Thor shrugs and gives her a smile that tastes of sadness. "How could I be?"

"... We weren't dating, you know?"

Natasha's words come so suddenly that it takes Thor a second to process them. When he finally does, it takes Lys pecking at his ear again (albeit a bit harsher than before) for him to answer. He'd offered, but he certainly didn't think she'd take him up.

"Of course you weren't. We're not in a very... Date-inspiring setting right now." He throws in a careful hint of a smile. "Though I don't doubt hacking heads and being a general badass would be a good date activity for you."

She watches him in silence, and she's never reminded him more of Loki, all wary and closed off and fearful of being hurt. He's willing to bet she did her fair share of hiding in corners as a child, before she learned how to strike back and walk away with her head held high.

"I don't even know how it happened."

"That's usually how these things work-"

"I _always_ know how things happen, Thor. This wasn't supposed to be a thing."

"And why is it so bad that it is?"

Her eyes dig into him, angry, almost crazed.

"Why?!" She hisses, even as angry as she is, she doesn't dare attracting attention to them. "Because I'm out here an hour before sunset, trying to find a man that is probably a half-eaten corpse right now, and you can try dragging me, but I'm not going back until I find him!"

Thor stares, taking in her tense frame and her heavy breathing. Then, very slowly, he opens his arms tentatively.

Natasha's eyes harden to glare at him. He sighs.

"Humor me?"

And then she comes.

It's tense and awkward, and they're both keeping an eye out for anything that might try to sneak up on them, but Thor looks over Natasha's red head and finds that Zorya has curled tight, and Lys is perched atop her, covering her almost completely with her wings.

"I'm going to find them." He hears muttered against his chest, and he hugs tighter.

"I know. And I'm going to help you, ok?"

Natasha makes no other sound, but her lean arms tighten around his torso, and her nails dig into his sides.

They go back to the apartment building right after, not saying another word.

It's pitch dark when they arrive, still in silence and they've already crossed and left behind two solitary zombies too slow to be a problem. They stop at the door.

"I'll-"

"Can I ask you a question?" Thor interrupts her as soon as she's started, and then does his best to look sheepish until she rolls her eyes and nods. "You... Are you still going north? After we find them?"

His words thicken the silence, and he remembers Loki's words once more. He's at a loss of why his words are much blunter than the feelings that instigate them.

"I'll meet you here tomorrow, Thor." Natasha resumes her words as if he'd never spoken. "... Thank you for today." And with that, she turns on her heel and leaves.

\--

"Why are you not with the others?" Thor´s voice echoes around the empty room after the creaking of the door.

Jane turns to face him, still leaning on the open window. "I don´t like crowded spaces." She says, because half truths are much more easy to admit.

"I´ve noticed." Thor answers, and moves in closer to her. She feels her muscles stiffening, and her eyes drift to the door out of her will. It´s barely visible behind Thor´s bulk and that knowledge make her tense even further. Aster flies in through the window, and perches on her lap with his feathers all puffed up.

Thor stops on his tracks, and Lys lands on the floor, her head twisting from side to side and her wings firmly tucked against her body. Jane smoothes a hand down her own daemon´s feathers. This is not the first time they´re alone with Thor, and they _trust_ him, no matter how surprising it might feel.

"Are you ok?" The man asks after Aster´s plumage has gone back to normal.

"I am." Jane nods. "You just..."

"Did I move too fast?"

Jane stiffens again, this time consciously. He shouldn´t know that.

"Who told you?" She asks. She had aimed for biting but it comes out tired instead.

Thor frowns and, after a second of thought, crouches and sits on the floor next to Lys.

"Nobody told me anything." He starts, slowly. "I... Pieced it together? I didn´t bring it up because you didn´t either, and I didn´t want to make you uncomfortable."

At this, Jane keeps silent, but doesn´t avert her eyes from the concerned blue ones staring up at hers. Eventually, it´s Thor who looks away first.

"You´re scared of me, aren´t you?" His voice is barely louder than a whisper, and not resentful or accusing. It´s just... Stating a fact.

The scar on her hip burns like an open wound.

"Yes." She forces out, as firm as she can. She doesn´t feel sorry, or guilty. She doesn´t have to. 

She _shouldn´t_ have to.

She also knows she likes this man in a way she thought she´d never feel again, especially so soon, but as strong as the feeling is, it´s still not enough to push away the soul-crushing asphyxia she gets whenever she´s alone with him.

Thor´s face doesn´t change, he´s not sad, not angry. If anything, he seems embarrassed.

"I´m sorry, Jane, I... I know I´ve been being a bit too overwhelming, but I´ll stop if-"

"I killed him." Jane blurts out, before she can force it back.

"I- What?" Thor chokes on whatever apology he was about to make, and stares as her as if seeing her for the first time.

Jane clenches on Aster's feathers again, and his presence alone is enough to stop her from backing off. "I killed him. Me and Darcy, we were... It was our only chance!" She blurts out to try and stop the stuttering. "We had just lost Selvig, and when they found us- there were just too many of them, Thor, we just couldn't escape, there was always someone usi-"

"Don't," Thor interrupts her, and his kind that always make her feel better are ice-cold, his mouth set on a grim line. "Don't say it."

"... It still happened, whether I say it or not." She frowns.

"Yes, but... I don't like to hear you talking about yourself that way."

Jane lets out a huff of air, and her hands clench into fists again as she looks down.

"... Jane?" Thor sounds pained, almost confused, and there's a ruffle and a dull thud that Jane can identify as Lys smacking him across the head with a powerful wing. She keeps her head down, but she has to fight down her smile.

However, the battle is lost soon enough, when there's more shuffling and Thor's face appears in her line of vision.

"Did you just... Crawl?" She asks, containing a laugh. 

Thor shrugs, his shoulders leaving a trail in the dusty floor. "You weren't looking up." He smiles, but he sobers back down a second after. "I... I'm sorry, Jane." He mutters. "I still don't like it, but if... You can tell me about it. Any way you want. I'm honored you trust me on this."

"It's not going to be pretty." She frames his head with her shoes, and he scrunches his nose when one of her shoelaces tickles it.

"Nothing is, lately." His eyes dig into hers, and Aster lets out an anxious caw and flutters away from the pair. Out the corner of her eye she sees Lys nesting a safe distance easy from him. "I'm ready when you are."

At this, Jane lifts her head and looks forward. It's easier like this. This way she doesn't have to see Thor's face and whether or not he looks at her differently.

"Selvig died on a Wednesday, seven months ago." She starts. "After that Darcy and I were alone, and we had nowhere to go. We tried staying in one place, keep a low profile, you know the drill. But the zombies kept coming up to us, we'd wake up one day and have to run over a small horde just to get away."

"So the other day...?"

She lets out a small chuckle. "Just Darcy doing what she's good at, yes. Anyways, that's when we decided to get moving. We made our way north, Darcy was still hoping to find her stepfather and sister. We were in Kansas, I think, when they found us." Her mouth tightens into a line, and one of Thor's hands comes to rest against the side of her foot. "Thank God they didn't notice we had the RV, or we wouldn't have made it... We used to do this thing, we'd hide the damned thing in an alley where we could access it from the top, in case it got surrounded, and then hide the keys nearby, so any of us could get in if we got separated.

>>We had just come out of a house we'd broken in. There wasn't much to take, mostly a couple of jackets we took because ours were starting to get threadbare. That's when Aster noticed they were tailing us, and that they were being way too sneaky to be trusted, so we decided we'd try to lose them and then get back to the car. Now, Darcy can't... It's because of Vita, you know? None of us would stand a chance swimming against them, but they're not the fastest runners. 

They cornered us in a backyard, when we were trying to scale the fence. Darcy was already over it, and I climbed right up when I saw them, but.... >>

She sighs. "His daemon, her name was Briare. She was a kind of cat... Caracal, I think they're called, with cute tufted ears and pretty yellow eyes. She got Aster when he was trying to fly away, and that's how they pulled me back. Darcy couldn't even try to jump down, this big man just yanked on her leg until she fell. They actually sprained her ankle." She adds, as though that's the lesion that mattered. "I've tried- I don't remember his name. At all." There's a firmness to her voice that she hopes can convey how very much unwilling she is to be questioned about that. She stopped trying to remember the second the scar healed.

>

Here, she makes a pause, and stretches her arm over Thor's head in a way that lets him see the inside of her elbow, where three white and thin, barely visible lines run down to her wrist. "She scratched Aster's wing once. Made us bleed."

"... Oh." Thor's eyebrows furrow a little, and she frowns as well.

"What?"

"Nothing, it's just that I always thought..." He swallows once, and then gifts her with a smile that looks a bit too sad, even when looked at upside down. "My brother had some scars like those. He didn't like to talk about it. I assumed it was the same with you... I don't know whether to be happy that I was mistaken or not."

Oh.

She pulls her arm back, stares at the scars for the first time in quite a while and realizes that yes, they could easily pass for old self-harm injuries, or (she really hopes it isn't the case, if just for the man with the bright smile and the hopeful eyes) something more radical.

"I'm sorry." She says, because she can't think of anything else to say, not when the only reliable data she has is that said brother is still alive, and she can't know for sure how fresh the wound is.

Thor's smile grows fonder. Sadder. Those two feelings seem pretty mixed up when it comes to the mysterious brother.

"He got better." Then he squeezes her foot through her sneaker's rough material. "Do you want to continue?"

Jane nods, and takes a second to piece her thoughts together.

"I don't know how much time we were there. They kept us in a locked room with no windows, and they only fed us when they remembered to, so there was no way to keep track." She doesn't mention anything else, not waking up and wondering if you had gone blind, scrambling for Darcy's bone-thin hand in the dark, or the _smell_ of the room, because those are the things that wake her in the middle of the night and that keep her up with her heart running. "He was drunk that day. He came in and locked the door behind him, and when he looked at me I just _knew_ he was going to kill us.

And all the time Briare just watched and _smiled_ , and I've never wanted to... Killing the Severed is a necessary evil, you know? But this was different. I _wanted_ to kill her, Thor, to kill them so that they'd never hurt anyone the way they hurt Darcy and me. >>

"And you did." Thor mutters under his breath. Jane smiles past him at her daemon, and Aster takes off to perch on her shoulder and look down at the man on the floor.

"We did." She answers the not-question, and rests her hand on her hip, over the scar. "He had a knife. It was long and serrated, with a red handle, and he always had it at my neck when he raped me." The word feels weird in her tongue, and there's a tightness in her chest that loosens when it falls through her lips. "It all happened so fast...one second he was pulling my head back and pressing harder on the knife, and the next Aster was attacking him."

"I was trying to claw his eyes out." The daemon remarks dryly. "Now _that_ made him let go of her."

Jane pets a hand down his back, her glance firmly fixed on the wall across from her.

"I think we surprised him, because Briare had never touched us, only our daemons. We fought him for the knife and we knew we had to be quick because Vita was trying to hold Briare down, but he didn't have much of a chance." She stops talking when she realizes she hasn't breathed in several seconds. She inhales deeply, and exhales slowly in an attempt to calm herself. "He couldn't keep holding the knife, not if he wanted to keep protecting his face. And then I took it, and I..."

Her voice runs out.

"You stabbed him." Thor whispers under her, and she chooses that moment to look down into his face. He looks so calm, even though what he's listening to is anything but, and his hand hasn't left the side of her foot, where it has taken to trace random patterns. Her hand clenches in Aster's feathers, and she finds her voice again.

"I stabbed Briare."

Thor stiffens.

The silence in the room thickens until it's almost palpable.

The sound of Lys's wings flapping is almost deafening, as she flutters to land on her human's chest, and one her golden eyes pierces straight through her. Aster stiffens in her lap, and Jane can feel his need to hide, and his resolution not to.

"She just... Melted into Dust, right there. And he fell over and didn't move anymore. Darcy and I... There was no one guarding the door. When we went down the hallway we saw a couple of them, and they were so drunk they were practically passed out, didn't even notice us. Now that I think about it, we were very lucky the rest of them decided to drown their grief in alcohol rather than venting out with us like _he_ did. If there had been even just one other person there, we wouldn't have made it." She sighs. Lys is still staring at them, and she feels slightly dizzy. "It was dawning, when we got out, I remember that. We found the RV where we had left it. One of the windows was broken, but the keys were still hidden and we got out of there as fast as we could. I think we ran over someone at some point, but I have no idea if it was a zombie, or one of them or whatever. The only thing we cared about was getting away." She finishes, and lets her voice die and her gaze drift to the side.

The great eagle bows her head down, and tucks her wings in. After what feels like forever, Thor looks up at her again, and he still looks troubled, but there's a fierce determination in his eyes that she can't look at straight, lest it blinds her and makes her forget.

"You're very brave." Is the only thing he says at first. Then his eyes drift up to the ceiling, and his hands intertwine over his daemon's back. "I can't... I can't promise I will never hurt you, Jane. Now less than ever, what with the circumstances and everything. But as your friend, I _can_ promise I will stand by you on every decision you make. On any subject it might be." He looks back at her then, and smiles in a shy sort of way that by no mean suits a bomb of a man like him, but that makes him look the more endearing for it.

"Thank you." Jane forces out her throat, that feels so much more sore and rough than before. She feels exhausted herself, as if she just ran a marathon or climbed up 10 flights of stairs. "For listening."

"Thank you for trusting me."

Maybe she does let herself forget for a second there.

\--

"Do you think they're still alive?" Tony asks, screwing the lid of the old DVD player open with the screwdriver tip of his handy pocket knife. It's still in the sheath Rhodey used to carry it on, and he wonders silently...

"Who are we exactly talking about again?" Except for the part of his mind that tends to voice his every thought, of course. He turns his head to aim a frown at the sandcat, who only licks her paw in response, refusing to look back at him.

"You know who I'm talking about." He answers, and goes back to turning the pocket knife in his hand.

"They are strong. We will find them, we promised." The daemon says with a voice that's much _too_ steady to be anything but stubborn encouragement. "It's our fault they're lost." Tony smirks.

"Who are we talking about again?" The teasing is bitter on his tongue because he truly doesn't know, the accusation is applicable to so many of his acquaintances that he's honestly begun to wonder on whether or not he and Cole are a disaster magnet. He goes back to the DVD player, and they fall into an easy silence. Tony gathers what salvageable pieces he can find and bags them separately, in case they might come in handy later.

"Ichar would know what to do." Cole's voice pierces across the room like a spear, and Tony's hand loses its grip on the machine. "He could've found them."

Tony's fists clench, and his shoulders stiffen.

"Well they're not here. I thought you'd gotten used to the fact."

"Have you?" The sandcat's eyes burn on his back like two miniature suns, but he doesn't turn to face his daemon.

"Shut up for once will you, Cole?"

\--

_"You look different." Hogun is the first to notice. Sif turns from the argument she's having with Fandral (Hir and Jano can settle it on their own anyways) and sees the two brothers coming up to them._

_"What's it to you?" Loki snaps back. Sterk is some kind of lean, thin-legged wild dog with beautiful tan-golden fur and steel gray eyes, but the fangs he bares at them are no less vicious-looking than any of his other forms'. They turn on the spot and walk away from the group without another word, headed for who knows where._

_"What's wrong with them now?" Sif asks, rolling her eyes. Thor shrugs and his face looks both saddened and confused._

_"Sterk settled."_

_"What?"_

_"That's amazing!"_

_"But Fandral's Hir hasn't settled yet and they're the same age!"_

_Thor lifts a hand to stop the chorus of excited questions from his friends._

_"I thought it was cool too, but no one seems excited at home." He explains. "Mom has been all angry, Seidr won't let anyone close to Sterk, and my dad and Huginn weren't home in the whole weekend."_

_"Huh... Maybe they don't like what Sterk settled as?" Fandral theorizes, but Thor shakes his head._

_"I checked, he's a coyote. They're very smart and strong, and they play pranks all the time in mythology."_

_"It sounds perfect for them." Sif frowns. "Maybe it's that he settled too early?"_

_Thor shrugs again, sadder this time as if he'd been hoping his friends would shed some light on the matter._

_But they can't help, and neither can he, and Loki doesn't return until it's time to head back home, holding Sterk in his arms like he would get lost if he let go, and he doesn't speak a word to any of them._

Eleven _is_ too young an age to settle.

She has no idea why she's remembering this right now. It took Loki a long time to go back to how he was before settling, and she didn't understand then but she thinks she does now, and she's angry.

Sif sits atop her daemon to have a better viewpoint of any stiff that might try to sneak up on her sleeping companions, and she thinks of the one they just can't seem to find.

"It wasn't our fault." Jano's deep baritone voice breaks the night's silence. "Not knowing, I mean. We were too young."

"So was he." She retorts, and Jano's ears lower in defiance. "Do you think he ever told anyone? Asides from his parents."

"I know Sterk never did." The war-horse daemon kicks and digs at the soft, dry dirt with the point of a hoof. "Too proud for that."

"I hope whoever it was is a zombie now." Sif doesn't add a word to her statement, not even when Jano huffs in surprise and turns his head to aim one of his large eyes at her.

"That's an ugly thing to say." The horse mutters, and her hands tighten around the locks of his mane.

"It's an uglier thing to do."

Volstagg's soft snoring is the only sound that remains through the night, until the sky lightens in color and Sif touches Hogun's shoulder as softly as she can. Nada's bright eyes shoot open a second before her human's, and they take up the watch without a word.

\--

"Can I ask you something?"

"I'd rather you didn't." Loki shuffles a little to try and get a bit less uncomfortable, but the tree bark under his back is hard and unforgiving, and the wind that crashes against the building behind him threatens to freeze him and contrasts horribly with the soft warmth of Sterk on his belly. Maybe the daemon has confused his willingness for contact (a necessity, really) with a change of his disposition.

"Would you have been happier if it had been me instead of Seidr?" Sterk mutters with his muzzle buried in the folds of his human's hoodie. 

Through what remains of their connection, Loki sees his mother again, her beautiful face twisted in agony, and he hears Seidr's desperate screams as a stiff rips his hindleg off and a second one takes a bite of his flank. His red coat runs golden with rivers of Dust and he seems to melt, and his golden eyes dig into Loki's through the backyard's window a second before he dissolves.

"Yes." He says automatically. Sterk stiffens on his belly, and he lets out a long breath that he can almost see, a cloud of black poison drifting up into the night. "We wouldn't have to be dealing with this."

Sterk's glance is heavy against his face, but he doesn't look down.

"Would you be happier if it had been me?" Loki asks then. His daemon shuffles a little, and there's the wet caress of a tongue on the back of his hand.

"I like being alive. I think it's what they would've wanted."

"Is this life though?" Starlight filters down through the tree's leaves and Loki closes his eyes to escape it.

Sterk takes longer to answer this time. "It's surviving. It's what we do."

"I'm tired Sterk."

"Me too."

-

"Uh... I'm not sure guys." Fandral looks up at Hir, and the peahen shakes her head. "It doesn't seem like something Loki would do, even to escape us."

Before them, the abandoned mall looks like a gargantuan tomb, all broken crystals and torn up doors left forgotten to tell stories of desperate people seeking for clothes, food, shelter and loved ones, its once carefully kept garden now wildly overgrown and seeded with remnants of half eaten bodies.

"There's no other place around, and if he found a way to barricade a backroom or something it would be perfectly safe." Sif leans against Jano, stealing warmth from her daemon to protect herself against the cooling breeze of the pre-dawn hours.

"Maybe for a lone person that has a lot of experience at hiding, but for all of us?" Fandral counters. "If there's a single stiff in there it's gonna come right after us and we'll be trapped in there."

"Ok then, you stay here and I'll go in to look for him." Sif decides. "Jano and I can either deal or flee from a bunch of stiffs, so-"

"You're not going in alone." Hogun's voice is barely more than a mutter at any given time, but this time it reverberates clear and strong. "We go together or not at all."

Sif looks around at her friends, their determinate faces and firm grip on their weapons, and nods.

"Together then. And when we find Loki we kick the shit out of him together as well." She smirks, before turning on her heel to lead the way to the mall.

-

Their steps' echos are horribly loud in the empty hall, and it reminds Fandral of that one time Loki and his friends convinced him to sneak into a mall in the middle of the night, and they spent the whole night hiding behind columns and stifling laughter as the night guards walked past them.

 

He still remembers the taste of Eris' lips on his that night, hiding behind the bar of a fast food stall, and the feeling of her snake daemon wrapped around Hir's neck -a part of him broke down when Loki told him both she and Anansi were gone, because they were so strong, she was so brave, and those two together with Loki gave off the impression that they were made and brought together to survive anything, but that´s just another lie isn´t it?- the feeling of belonging into a group of people so different from him, the thrill of breaking the rules and just not caring.

The illusion vanishes when they walk past the first shattered store window and the merchandise inside splattered with rust-brown stains. These guys are a bit more dangerous than security guards.

"Loki?" He dares calling with his hands screening his voice. "Come on man! This is dangerous!" 

"Sterk!" Cari barks as Nada creeps as far as she can from Hogun, so low on the ground she's almost a shadow, and looking for any hiding spot the humans might be overlooking.

Silence is the only answer to their calls, and Fandral feels his pulse quicken. The mall is big, and they're just at the entrance so it's probable Loki just didn't hear them. Still, a part of him brings forth the image of a pale corpse, covered in blood and alone, so alone without his soul. And if those two are gone then what chances do the rest of them have?

He keeps walking anyways, and the whole thing feels like a dream, albeit a bad one. The wind breaks through shattered windows and whispers across empty hallways. There are flipped tables everywhere and dragging footsteps in the newly settled dust, and it´s just mesmerizing, the feeling of this building designed for life and so devoid of it.

“Cari smells something” Volstagg´s booming voice breaks the silence, and they still in their places. “Where is it?” He asks, and his daemon lifts her snowy white head to look at him.

“Forward.” She states, clear and calm. Too calm. “It smells dead.”

Her words hang like stones around everyone's necks. Definitely no one expected Loki to be the first of the group to go.

They follow Cari in silence, grim-faced and ready for the worst, but the motionless form laying in the middle of the food zone is much too small to be Loki, and they all let out sighs with varying degrees of relief.

Volstagg walks down to kneel by the side of the small broken corpse, and Fandral makes his way over to graze a hand on his shoulder.

She's a girl, or she was. Slightly older than Flosi, she's still far too young for the end she got . Her curled brown hair is caked to the side of her head and her eyes are glazed over. Volstagg lowers her eyelids carefully with two fingers and she should look asleep, but what happened here is too heavy to pretend otherwise.

"I wonder where he parents are." Sif observes in a low voice, and Hogun shrugs next to her.

"Does it matter?"

It doesn't, not anymore. Still they keep pondering it for a second too long, and none of them notice the dragging sounds until it's too late.

-

Loki wakes up to the sound of screaming, but it's in Sterk's ears rather than his, so he wonders frantically how far the person is.

Then Sterk focuses on the actual sounds, and the wave of terror that floods their bond is so intense Loki stops breathing for a second.

"Inside, they're inside!" The daemon barks with high-pitched fear. As Loki climbs them both down he has enough presence of mind to wonder how the hell they caught up to him this fast, and why had they chose to to go into the goddamned mall instead of following his trail to the overgrown garden.

The mall is empty as he'd thought the first time he saw it, but there's a multitude of footsteps and paw prints in the dust cover of the floor, and the screams echo with twice the strength here.

"BEHIND YOU" Sif yells, and Jano's hooves stomping on the floor tiles sound like cannon booms. They ring in Sterk's ears and make Loki dizzy, but he follows his daemon up the frozen escalator and they dash across an empty hall until they reach what should've been the fast food zone.

There's a corpse; Loki's stomach unclenches when he realizes it's too small to be any of his companions, but clenches again when he notices the sticky pool of blood that drags into a path leading into another hall.

It feels like they went back in time, when they reach the others.

There's only two zombies left on their feet, and they're so distracted crawling towards the rearing horse daemon that Loki has no trouble sneaking close enough to jam his knife into one skull first and then the other.

"What the fuck were you thinking just walking in here?!" Loki screams, and it's not so much anger that tears at his throat but rather the fact that he can see Volstagg behind Jano's legs, breathing heavily while Fandral presses down onto his bloodied arm. 

Sif slides down from her daemon's back and lands before Loki with her smooth angular face contorted in rage.

"Maybe we wouldn't have come here if we hadn't been looking for you!" She yells back, and Loki feels a bit surer on his feet. Being blamed he's familiar with, he knows what to do with it much better than he knows how to manage the graying stain spreading through Volstagg's veins all up his arm and the low whining of Cari by her human's side.

"Did you seriously think I'm stupid enough to get cornered?!"

-

Sif can feel her hands twitching with the urge to take a handful if Loki's hair and just shake him to hell and back because he looks even thinner than when he left them just weeks ago but he's alive and well and that's much more than she'd hoped for.

"I don't know Loki! You were stupid enough to run away on your own during a damned apocalypse!" Sif retorts. "Do you ever stop to think how your idiotic shit will affect anyone else?!"

"That's enough!" Hogun's voice is hoarse with frustration, and that more than anything is what causes them both to shut up and turn to the other three.

Volstagg is growing grayer by the second, and his breathing is coming in short spasms that shake his whole body. Sif looks at Cari by his side (at least she wasn't ripped off him, at least they'll go together) and she thinks for a second she can see the bond between human and daemon thinning, straining with the effort to keep them one.

Cari looks up with so much effort Sif hurts for her, and her sweet dark eyes fix on some point behind her, in Loki's direction. Then the great white dog parts her lips and speaks.

"I found you." She says in a raspy voice that's as foreign to her as the weak half wags her tail is barely managing.

"You did."

Sif freezes. That's Sterk's voice; she hasn't heard Loki's daemon speak in years.

She stands still on her spot as soft paws make their way to Cari, and when the daemon comes into her field of vision any hope she ever harbored of helping Loki back to normal just shrivels up and dies.

He's smaller than before, and his overall shape is less angular, rounder. His cinnamon colored fur is now a bright red that darkens to black at his paws and ears and lightens to pure white at his chest and the tip of his thick tail.

The only difference between him and Frigga's daemon is the color of his eyes, and the wary way he walks as he steps up to Cari.

"That form suits you." Cari says. Sterk takes a nip at her ear with such care it seems as though she might break at any given moment.

"I have no other choice do I?" He asks sadly.

"Like that's ever stopped you two before." Cari responds, and pokes at the fox's side with her nose. "Take them to Lys and Thor will you?"

Sterk bows his head, but says nothing. Sif looks back and finds Loki staring at the whole scene with dead eyes.

Volstagg's voice brings her back around.

"I don't want to turn." He rasps out. "Send us out together." He can probably feel the breaking bond in painful clarity, but Sif looks into his eyes and knows she won't be able to kill her friend. Hogun shakes his head, and Fandral sighs.

They've spent so much time trying to keep each other alive that this comes as a low blow. Volstagg knows this, and he's not looking at any of them.

Loki's tight lips curve into a jagged, humorless smile as he acknowledges the dying man´s stare.

"You're a bunch of assholes." He declares, then shakes his head. "I guess this is what I'm good at."

Sterk looks up at his human with sad grey eyes as he grips the knife again and crouches next to the man. He takes a step back to let the other daemons say their goodbyes to Cari.

"I hope you do find your family again." Is all Loki says when he positions the tip of his knife on Volstagg's chest.

"That's two of us." Volstagg smiles sadly. "I'm sorry for making you do this... I hope you find Thor soon."

Loki nods his acknowledgment and his grip on the handle tightens. His hand is firm and fast, and the blade is in and out in a second.

Volstagg lets out a last exhale, and buries his stiffening hand in Cari's fur as she begins dissolving in golden Dust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPOILERS FROM THE CHAPTER
> 
>  **Character Death:** Volstagg. I'm very sorry, the big guy is honestly my favorite out of the warrior three, and his character in this was kind of an unspoken steady presence for Loki in his troubled state. Still, I felt like Volstagg was pulling through for his friends more than anything else, when what he really wanted was to be with his family again. So there you have it _every atom of me and every atom of you_ Volstagg is with his wife and kids now.  
>  **Past rape, kidnapping and violence:** Jane and Darcy were held against their will for sexual release by a hostile group of survivors. Why so many hostile groups of survivors? As cliche as it sounds, sometimes the real monsters look just like us. I hold the utmost respect for rape and abuse survivors, and I tried to convey that through the way Jane refused to excuse or dilute any part of her story, and the way Thor dealt with receiving it.
> 
>  **Past sexual abuse to a minor** : It is implied that Loki's daemon settled at an unusually young age (11) as a result of the trauma of being molested by an adult in his life. This adult was NOT any of his parents, most likely a teacher, I believe. 
> 
> Sorry for the text walls everywhere, I'm glad to have posted this, maybe now I'll be able to continue it without issues hehe.  
> Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Sorry for the long wait and thanks to those that have stuck to this fic so far despite my lack of consistency, you're beautiful motherfuckers and I love you.
> 
> That being said, this fic is NOT dead and this chapter has NOT been beta-ed, so sorry in advance.
> 
> NOW ON TO THE STORY

**5**

"Steve?" Clint's frown grows more pronounced, and he chances stretching a hand to squeeze the man's shoulder. A snarl is the only warning he gets to throw himself back as fast as he can, barely evading Magna's claws.

"You have to eat something." Apolla insists for him. "You'll both die for sure if you don't."

Magna's eyes reflect the dying sunlight back at him. "We have bigger problems to worry about." The wildcat's voice is strained with pain, but Clint shakes his head.

"We have to keep him alive and healthy Magna, it's the only way." He looks down at his friend's limp body with sorrow hanging like a stone from his neck, and he barely manages to supress the sad sigh that's resting just behind his lips. "I don't know if he's going to make it through... But keeping him well is the best way we can help him."

Magna whines in pain, but she eats the dried meat strips Clint laid next to her, and he's free to trickle a thin string of water into Steve's unmoving lips.

\---

It's been three days.

Loki can still feel the knife's handle in his hand, and the silence grates on his mind so much that he focuses in the white tip of Sterk's tail, swinging side to side as he walks in front of him, until everything else is blocked out.

They have walked like madmen, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and Volstagg's last resting place.

Loki's lips tense into a strained smirk. _Resting_ is definitely not how he'd put it.

Stops have been few and far in between, and always in silence. Loki sits in the shade of whatever place they have deemed safe, and stares ahead until he falls asleep or hears the others getting to their feet.

He looks at no one, and no one talks to him. In a sense, the only thing that's changed from his solo time is how he rests his hand atop Sterk's back when he drifts away to sleep.

Thor and Lys' presence is an anchor, the faint skyline of a city is drawing itself against the sickly dawn, and Loki wishes for the umpteenth time that he was able to trade places with one of the bodies he's left behind.

\--

The radio's dials are sticky with what Tony hopes is only grime and rat piss instead of blood, and the signal it picks can hardly even be described as such, but the static in his ears and his apparent inability to fix a thing as simple as a handheld radio don't grate on his nerves nearly as much as Natasha's eyes on the back of his neck.

"Nothing yet?" She asks. Tony shakes his head stoically, but Cole rolls her eyes.

"Both Clint and Steve are savvy enough to send a simple message if they had the means for it" Tony tries again. "But transmitting equipment doesn't just fall off of trees, you know? It doesn't mean anything other than the fact that they don't have a way to message us."  
He doesn't know who he's trying to convince here, and judging on Natasha's huff as she walks out the door, she's all too aware of it.

\--

"I take it the search is not going too well." Darcy mutters as soon as the bang of a door crashing against its threshold dies down.

"That's what they get for not accepting help." Vita adds from his place on her lap. "Not that I'm complaining, I mean I prefer my days as zombie-less as they can be, but finding Clint and Steve would be much easier if there were more than two people looking." He shows his fangs when his human pulls at his whiskers.

"It would also make it easier for more people to get lost and make us more vulnerable to attacks though." Darcy lets go of the whiskers when Vita's tiny paws bat at her hand. "Just saying it how she sees it." She shrugs. 

"Besides, Natasha and Thor can cover big areas on their own, and Zorya and Lys are actually dangerous in battle, unlike you and me." They look up in surprise, only to find Aster perched on top of a broken headboard. Vita snarls some comeback at him, and Darcy smiles. It's all so quiet right now that everything that happened before is starting to look like a horrible dream.

Jane chooses that moment to walk into the room with Bruce and Aswha in tow. "Are you fighting again?" She addresses the two daemons. Aster glides down to the bear's back to make faces at Vita.

"You know them." Darcy smiles. "What brings you two here?"

"Your delightful company, of course." Bruce looks around the room, before he takes a seat next to Darcy. "We've been talking about that theory I mentioned."

"The Dust thing, right?"

"That one. Jane thinks it's basically impossible for some stars reason." Bruce says, and Darcy rolls her eyes.

"It's always secret stars reasons with her, you'll have to forgive her." She smirks at Jane. "What are the stars doing now?"

Jane sticks her tongue out before growing serious. "It's actually what they're _not_ doing” She starts. “Rusakov particles are well known in my field. They drift down from a point in air space that we can't exactly discern, it's been recorded appearing as high as atmospheric levels, but also lower than commercial flight height."

"So? Is it not falling anymore or what?" Darcy frowns.

"Pretty much yes." 

"What?" Bruce asks, frowning.

"It's not falling. Dust is supposed to be in constant expansion, but at some point before the outbreak it stopped falling, and started flowing instead. This has reduced the amount of Dust in our dimension, made it finite." Jane explains. She's taken hold of one of Darcy's locks and is twisting it into a loose braid.

"So there might not be enough particles to reverse the separation in the zombies..." Bruce's frown becomes deeper and his voice falls an octave.

"Correct me if I'm wrong nerds." Darcy intervenes, and Vita laughs. "Isn't Dust supposed to come from conscious thoughts? Why can't we just make more?"

"Because that's a misconception." Bruce replies.

"You're a misconception." Darcy pokes her tongue at him, and turns to look at Jane.

"Humans attract Dust, but we don't create it. Since Dust is not even reaching us anymore trying to attract it won't make much of a difference."

"Then how do we make Dust fall again?" After Darcy speaks, Jane pulls on the lock of hair, and she turns to look reproachfully at her. "What?"

"Sorry. What do you mean make it fall again?"

"Well... Just that. How do we fix Dust?"

Aster glides down and lands an inch away from her hand. "Darcy..." He starts shyly. "We can't just fix Dust. No one knows exactly how it behaves, what it is even. We don't even know where it comes from."

"That's the problem with you scientists." Vita rolls his eyes and bats his heavy tail at the crow. "As soon as something steps an inch outside your calculations you get stuck on how impossible it is." He jumps hastily aside, when Ashwa's enormous bulk is lain carelessly behind him.

"How will you fix Dust then, tiny one?" She asks in her deep resonant tones.

Vita stares at her for a moment, his tail swinging like an excited cat's behind him. Then he propels himself forward with his strong back legs, and climbs over the bear's back and head.

"Not me. Us." He sinks his face in Ashwa's thick fur and the bear laughs. Darcy looks straight at Bruce, and the man can only hold her stare for a while before looking down, but he's smiling and _not quite_ blushing, and he looks perfect.

\--

"How is he?" Clint asks, looking up from the meager fire where a scratched can of beans stew sits warming up.

Magna keeps pacing from side to side, shaking her head like a swarm of flies is giving her hell.

"He's stronger. Or his body is. I still feel like I'm dying, like he is. And he won't wake up." She says in a snarl.

"Apolla is keeping watch." Clint retorts. "It'll all be much better when the others find us, Bruce will know what to do."

"It's not Bruce I want to see." The wildcat stops her pacing to scratch at the ground without looking up, and Clint finds a small smile has made its way to his lips.

"She's coming for you. Nothing is going to keep them from you, not for long. I promise."

"I hope you're right."

\--

They reached the city yesterday, and somehow the night is colder here than it was in open country.

Sif looks over her friends as they sleep, it's become a habit now.

"I'm killing them, Jano." She whispers softly enough to not wake them up. "I should've taken them to a safe place instead of dragging them into looking for Thor."

Almost immediately, her daemon's huge head is laid on her shoulder, and Sif can feel the horse's long eyelashes brushing against the side of her face when he blinks.

"You protect them. You couldn't have stopped Loki from looking for Thor if you had tried, so it's better we came with him. Honestly I think the group is the only reason he hasn't gotten himself killed yet." He says.

"At least he's not hiding Sterk anymore." Sif sighs. "He's hardly spoken to anyone though."

"You know I'm right here, don't you?" Sif and Jano freeze on their spots, but Loki's voice lacks the usual bite and it's coated in exhaustion instead.

"I thought you were asleep." She admits. "Come sit with us?" The offer is made by mere courtesy, so Sif is understandably shocked when Loki climbs to his feet and walks up to her. Sterk's soft paws don't make the slightest sound behind him.

Once when she was a kid, they had been playing at her house, when they saw a dog out on the street. It was in that awkward stage between puppy and adult, but what made Sif's heart clench was the outline of every single bone against the thing's skin.

She had tried to feed it the half eaten sandwich she hadn't finished at lunch, but the animal ran and turned to fix them with a wary look. Jano's attempt to turn into another dog and take the food closer was only met with bared fangs and a weak snarl.

"This dog wants to die." Fandral had said, and gone back inside to keep playing. Hogun had shaken his head, and taken the food from Sif.

"He's just scared." He had said, and sat a few feet from the animal. Nada had turned into a mouse and climbed into her human's hair, who offered the sandwich with a stretched hand.

Sif had waited, eager, for the miracle to happen, for the dog to realize how good and pure these children were and to come wagging its tail, but it didn't happen. Hogun had sat there for fifteen minutes that had felt like an eternity for six years old her, and she'd gone back in with the others.

She had watched him from time to time through the window, and Hogun hadn't moved an inch. Finally, an hour or so later, the dog took a tentative step and then another, and she watched in amazement as the poor thing reached Hogun and took the sandwich from his hand. The kid hadn't moved until the dog deigned laying on the pavement next to him and even then he only lifted a hand slowly, to place it between the dog's ears and scratch softly.

"What are you thinking about?" Loki asks, and Sif hides her smile to herself. She has no sandwiches this time, but this is a stray she'll stay still for. 

She shrugs and thinks her next words over. Comforting people has never come easily to her. “I’m thinking that I’m glad we found you. We were worried.” Sif says. Loki flinches at her words, but remains at his place. She can feel a slight tickle in her cheeks, where Sterk is sniffing at Jano’s face curiously, and she struggles not to move. 

“I’m sorry about Volstagg.” Loki’s voice is a bit heavier now, and it sounds like guilt. Sif averts her eyes. 

“I’m sorry you had to be the one to do it.” She sighs. “I’m supposed to be the strong one, but you were the one that was there for him when I failed.” 

“You _are_ the strong one.” That voice comes from Sterk, sitting peacefully a few inches from Jano, and it’s kind of sad, that Loki can’t bring himself to do something as simple as complimenting her. It’s kind of sweet, that his soul can. 

“I guess we’ve always had that in common.” She smiles, still looking forward because Loki will probably bolt if she looks at him right now. He doesn’t answer, and the silence between them grows steadily, punctuated by the soft whisper of Fandral and Hogun’s breathing. 

Thor would be thankful that she’s being nice to his brother, but Sif isn’t doing it for him, she doesn’t think so at least. 

"If this was going to happen anyway, I'm happy I'm in it with all of you."

Out the corner of her eye, she sees him shrugging. "I'm still surprised you managed to round us all up." He says simply.

She thinks desperately at something to say then, something not related to Sterk's form, to his parents and most of all to finding Thor, since Loki seems to think it's the only thing they tolerate him for. "Remember the thing with the bubblegum?" She asks, because it's always one of the first things in her mind, when it comes to Loki.

"I was grounded for two weeks, I couldn't forget it if I tried." He huffs, but she can hear the smile in his voice.

"You say that like two weeks was the longest period you were ever grounded." She smirks.

"It's the longest I was ever grounded for something I didn't do."

"You did it though."

"Technicalities." He waves her away. "Your mother wasn't about to just let you cut your hair short and you were about as subtle as your daemon, with your useless rebelling. It was a personal offense."

"You said the same thing back then, you deserved those two weeks."

"Same goes for you, how unoriginal." He rolls his eyes exaggeratedly and she does the same, still smiling.

Loki was always a thorn on her side, but that’s just how things were between them. Whether or not they liked each other, all of them were a pack, and packs took care of each member as much as they could. 

“Since you’re obviously not going to sleep, mind keeping watch for a while?” She asks after a moment.

“… What makes you think I won’t bolt?” Loki asks as she leans back against Jano, resting her head on his neck and breathing in the familiar, calming scent. 

“I’m feeling very trusting tonight, don’t fuck it up.”

\--

"I have to talk to you" Tony's voice is nervous and guarded, but determined. It reminds Natasha that she hasn't been the best leader for her friends, all aloof and guarded, and ready to jump over anyone who dares suggesting an immediate course of action that's not "Find Steve and Clint".

And that's precisely where it's at, she thinks. Steve is the leader here, and she's meant to lead _him_ , not the others. She's his strength and steers him into the right path, and she takes off his obstacles before he's even close enough to see them, and now she's a guard without a charge, and her friends are as good as blind. She can't be the soft firmness, the hope they need.

 _"Tony's waiting"_ Zorya whispers through their bond. When Natasha comes out of her contemplation, the man in question is standing before her and looking at her with a hint of worry in his steely mask.

"What is it?"

"I got a radio transmission." He says simply, like he's not the bearer of the best news they've had in two weeks and a half. 

"You did?" She asks. Her heart is beating a thousand times a minute, but she keeps her face as plain as she can because if this is a false alarm... 

"Yes. Someone having trouble with their emitter." Tony explains, and a faint grin quirks his lips up. "I could hear wings and a female voice in the background of all the cursing, and I think it might have been Apolla."

Natasha feels the knot nerves have made of her stomach loosen in relief, before a frown takes over her features. 

"But that doesn't make sense." She starts, more for herself than to Tony. "If they're alive and well, why haven't they come here? That's the reason we didn't move buildings in the first place." 

Tony's daemon purrs consolingly, and she knows they've come to the same conclusion. 

"I think we have to prepare ourselves for the possibility" Tony's voice faltered and he covered it up with a cough. "That one or both of them might not be entirely ok. Or at all."

\--

To some, his silence is unnerving, but Hogun knows Loki welcomes it most of the time.

He always did when they were kids, and seems to do so now, if the way he falls to the back of the group with him is to be taken into account.

The two of them form somewhat of a united front, a coalition, and Sif and Fandral keep their chatter to themselves instead of burdening them with interaction. Hogun appreciates it; everyone mourns differently, after all.

Nada purrs sadly through their bond. Hogun almost recoils, when Sterk shifts in his path only enough to brush lightly against her side. Nada, who wears his heart on her sleeve, recoils openly.

“Do you hate me?” Loki asks. His voice is barely above a murmur, and he doesn’t look away from the path or slow down in the slightest. It’s also carefully devoid of emotion.

He’s so full of shit.

“I think you hate yourself enough for the rest of us.” He responds plainly.

To Loki’s credit, he doesn’t rise to the taunt, or tries to deny it. “So you do.”

“I don’t.” Hogun states. It feels too final. Too easy. “Why did you have to run off like that?”

This time Loki’s response doesn’t come as fast or as easily. Through Nada’s eyes he sees Sterk shrinking over himself, his tail between his legs and his ears low. He frowns.

“I didn’t want you to see.” Is what comes in the end. Then, after a couple of heavy breaths. “I didn’t want to see.”

“I guess it’s not the first time you hurt yourself trying to ignore your problems.” And Hogun tries, he really does, to keep the self righteousness out of his voice, but for the life of him he can’t.

Loki does stop then, for the length of a heartbeat, before resuming his walk. Sif and Fandral seem to not have noticed, thankfully.

“That was very low.”

“We lost Volstagg. I think I’m allowed.” Hogun remarks in a dry, scathing tone. Then, almost against his will, a slow exhalation robs him of every ounce of anger, leaving only exhaustion behind. “I really don’t want to talk about what happened.”

“With Volstagg? Or-” At this, Hogun shoots Loki a side glance. It seems to do the trick. “Got it.”

Silence stretches between them again, their steps on the worn asphalt resonating dryly.

There are some cars stranded on each side of the road, both coming and going from the city in front of them. Hogun can’t help but to wonder what were these people expecting to find on each direction, and if they found it in the end.

They pass a white suburban turned on its side. As soon as their steps are close enough to be heard, the thumping starts. Bloodied hands slam against the inside of the windshield. They walk faster.

At least these ones, Hogun guesses they didn’t find much more than an ugly last moment.

“Why don’t they just die when there’s nothing for them to eat?” Fandral says, disgust heavy and clear in his voice. Hogun looks up, he’s staring back at the sub with the trapped zombies, his hand resting on the handle of the axe he picked up from the hardware store. Sif places a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s not worth it Fandral, let’s go.” She tries to push him forward, but he just shakes her off.

“I can’t just ignore it, Sif, not anymore.” Fandral’s grip on his axe tightens, and Hogun feels his own hand sliding to his weapon, sees Nada move to the perfect position to tackle a ruffled up Hir off Jano’s back.

“You’ve lasted this far, let’s just ignore-“

“It’s not the same!” Fandral snaps finally. “We can’t just keep turning a blind eye and walking past them! If someone had killed the ones at the mall instead of just ‘ignoring it’ then we wouldn’t-“ His voice trembles, and he takes a second to breathe violently. “Volstagg wouldn’t be dead!”

Out the corner of his eye, Hogun can see Loki hasn’t moved an inch. He stands there, watching without the slightest emotion in his face. He probably had expected this sooner or later.

“We can’t kill every one we come across!” Sif is still trying to reason with Fandral, her hands hovering a few inches off his limbs, never making contact, tense and ready. “We just can’t Fandral, there’s too many of them, we-“ She looks at them then, her face a call for help, and Hogun is reminded abruptly that Sif is much better at punching problems than talking about them.

However, he’s just opened his mouth to say something when Loki takes a step forward. As if on cue, Sif takes one backward, standing between the two of them and the trapped zombies.

“You need to get your shit together.” Loki says bluntly, and Fandral looks at him like he’s slapped him. “You want to know who killed Volstagg?”

“Loki-“ Fandral begins with a pained expression and really, he’s much more forgiving than Hogun.

“I did. I killed him, and I would kill him again a thousand times, I would’ve done it even if he hadn’t asked me.” Loki speaks over him like he hadn’t even heard him. “He got to go on his terms, so I’m warning you once: You take a step towards that stupid car and I’m going to take you out too, because I’m not letting anyone else go like _they_ did. What’s it going to be?”

They stand there for what feels like an eternity, just staring at each other in a silence so deep that after a while the zombies’ beating and moaning begins to space out.

“You make a convincing argument.” Fandral says finally. “Also you’re a cheating bastard.” He adds almost casually. He turns to look at his daemon, and it’s there that Hogun has to wonder how on earth did Sterk manage to climb over to Jano’s back and clench Hir’s neck between his teeth. The peahen looks eerily calm now that she’s sure her human isn’t going to risk himself unnecessarily, and not at all like she should look when about to be mauled to death.

“I only play the cards I’m dealt.” Loki shrugs. “Get walking.”

They do.

Hogun uses the following silence to observe them all. Sif looks like he feels, exhausted and hopeless and determined. It can’t be easy, leading them all the time. Fandral walks with his eyes fixed on the road ahead and his fingers buried deep in his daemon’s feathers. Loki’s hands are clenched tight, his knuckles whiter than usual, and his breathing hasn’t slowed down.

 _”Well, this is a nice mood.”_ He half jokes to Nada over their bond.

She responds with an old, old memory that hurts and comforts him in equal measure.

_”I think they’d rather kill us, Nad.”_

_”One way to find out, no?”_

He lets another four or five minutes of silence go by, before starting.

“I spy with my little eye…” He can feel his friends’ disbelieving stares, but he focuses on the silhouette of a vulture flying far up in the distance and Nada’s supporting presence by his side. “Something that starts with a B”

No one says anything, and this new silence weighs like a stone in his stomach. He’s about to quicken his steps a bit more, when it’s broken by an unlikely combination.

“Bird” Says Sif hurriedly, like there’s a price to be won if she guesses first.

“Fandral’s skinny butt” Counters Loki with careful disinterest.

“You have a skinny butt, jerk” Fandral jumps in not a second later, and when he drops Hir on the ground she hones in on Sterk like a missile, pecking at the fox’s ears and tail and retreating when he turns to bite at the air in front of her.

“Well, no one’s ever complained before.” Loki shrugs.

“Please don’t go into details.” Sif rolls her eyes and moves to walk closer to Hogun, while Jano huffs angrily at the smaller daemons running between his legs.

Hogun allows himself a triumphant smile and fixes his eyes on an abandoned doll by the side of the road.

If only for a moment, they forget about the plague and the danger. If only for a moment, they’re 9 year olds in a road trip to the water park again, and that’s always a good state to revert back to.

\--

Dawn comes slowly, the light piercing at a snail’s pace through the old newspapers Clint has fixed to the broken windows with to try and keep out the cold that seems to be becoming the standard temperature lately.

He wonders idly if it might be getting closer to winter, he hasn’t bothered to keep a calendar in… Well, he would know how long it’s been if he kept one. The outbreak and people’s efforts to contain it messed with the weather an awful lot anyways, so trying to measure the year in seasons is mostly useless.

“We should celebrate Christmas. I mean, it’s cold enough for it.” He voices aloud calmly.

“Is that really what you’re worried about right now?” Apolla fixes him with a decidedly unimpressed stare from her perch on his knee.

“You know it is.” He shrugs and stretches to pick up the battered handheld radio he scavenged from one of the neighboring houses. It’s got stickers from a cartoon that was trending a few years before the outbreak, so Clint figures it had belonged to a kid. A kid with awesome taste in tv shows. “If we’re going to go get more food, we might as well get new batteries.”

“Hopefully we’ll find a pair that’s not dead.” The falcon daemon sighs. “He’s just not getting better… How long has it been already?”

“Five weeks.” Magna’s dry voice reaches them from the shadows. “It still hurts, but not as much. I can barely feel him anymore, I-”

“He’s going to die, if you don’t give him what he needs.” A fourth voice intervenes, and the three of them jump a foot in the air.

“Who’s there?” Asks Clint firmly. Apolla has her wings spread in preparation, and even Magna manages to crawl out of the corner she’s been resting at with Steve, to help defend their shelter if necessary. “Where are you? We’re armed.”

“I’m here.” The voice replies calmly, and they look around in confusion, until Magna hisses. There’s a shadow profiled against the newspaper of one of the windows. “Letting me in would be in good manners.”

“Not scaring the shit out of us would be in even better ones.” Apolla clicks her beak in annoyance, but she flutters up to the window frame and pulls at the newspaper until she’s lifted a corner.

A magpie daemon hops in like nobody’s business, and Clint narrows his eyes.

“Your human is definitely not going to fit through the window.” Magna observes, and he’s glad she’s voiced his thoughts.

The magpie laughs. “My human is far away, but she will be here soon. There’s many miles between us, but I can feel her speeding over them. Our siblings have always been fast.”

Apolla flutters to the ground to stand between the magpie daemon and her own human; her wings are still spread, and Magna crouches next to her in a way that leaves no room for doubt as to how united a front they are.

“That’s impossible.” The hawk daemon says. “No one has that wide a range. And who are you anyways?”

“That’s exactly my point, friend.” The magpie’s eyes shine as though he finds this extremely amusing. “We have no range at all, we’re free of each other and thanks to that, the closest of all pairs.”

“She asked you another question.” Magna intervenes, and her words are laced by a snarl so low Clint can barely hear it.

“My name is Moć. And my human is a witch.” The Magpie declares solemnly. Clint can’t take it anymore.

“Wow, to be so tiny you’re filled with an impressive amount of shit.” He spits out bitterly. Steve is dying, and some nutjob hiding behind the wall thought it’d be funny to send in their daemon to spout nonsense at them.

“I understand your human’s disbelief… Our species is very scarce in this world, compared to others.” Moć inclines his head. “But I guarantee it to be true. If you require a proof, I can provide it.”

“We’re waiting.” Apolla bats her wings once, impatient.

Moć nods, and turns to Magna. “Golden one, if you would please take me to your human?”

Magna observes the Magpie for a moment so long that Clint starts wondering whether she’s contemplating just eating the other daemon, but in the end she nods lightly, and waits until the magpie has perched on her back to rise and walk back to where Steve lies.

Clint and Apolla follow a second after; Magna has taken her usual place curled around Steve, and the magpie stands right next to her, gathering dust from the ground on his left wing’s feathers with the help of his right ones.

“This works much better with snow, but there’s so few of that left that we’ve had to adapt.” He says apologetically, and uses awkward hops to position himself on Magna’s back again, until he’s just a few inches over Steve’s fretful sleeping face.

Clint holds his breath, as the magpie brushes the dust over his friend’s face, and mutters under his breath. He’s about to kneel to listen more closely, when Apolla speaks through their bond/

 _”Don’t bother. We wouldn’t understand if he wrote it down for us.”_ She says in a strange, reverent tone.

_”So it’s true? He’s really a witch’s daemon?”_

_”What do you think?”_ She says, looking back forward.

Clint follows her gaze and does a double take. Steve’s awake.

“Steve? Can you hear me?” He goes down to his knees immediately, spooking Moć off Magna’s back and ignoring the wildcat’s protective snarl. “You’re safe here; just tell me if you can hear me.” He adds, when he realizes the way Steve’s blue eyes snap side to side is that deep ingrained instinct they all have, to make sure they’re not in immediate danger.

His words seem to make Steve relax somewhat, and he opens his mouth to reply. A dry, raspy gargle comes out, and he begins coughing.

“Water, right!” Clint wants to slap himself, but Apolla is already pulling him towards their dwindling pile of supplies (six bottles of water and four cans of tuna) and he’s forced to ignore his annoyance over his mistake. “Here, drink.” He says once he’s back, tipping the bottle just enough so that a thin stream of water drips between Steve’s parted lips.

“He’s not yet healed.” Moć says from some point behind Magna. “But I can’t do more until my human gets here.”

“Why _is_ your human coming here, Moć?” Asks Apolla.

The magpie daemon shrugs as much as his wings allow him. “I’ve flown wide and far for months, looking for a place that’s safe enough for us to stay.” He explains. “I have seen your friends, who look for you, and another group that heads here looking for one of your own. All together, we have a chance of survival. So I have sent word to my human, and she’s hurrying back.”

“And what makes you think we would take you as easily as that?” Magna questions then. Clint wonders why it’s taken her so long to speak, but he figures it’s got something to do with the way her head is resting on the crook of Steve’s neck and she seems truly relaxed for the first time in weeks.

“Well, the fact that I can guide your friends to you.” Moć answers casually, examining his feathertips the way one would fingernails. “That, and the other, slightly more important fact that I can keep your human alive until mine gets here to fix him, golden one.”

And well, there’s not much they can say to that, is there?

\--

“This is _bullshit_ , and I refuse to take part in it anymore.” Loki spits scathingly. All around him, Sif, Fandral and Hogun laugh, nasty and infuriating.

“Is widdle Loki angwy?” Sif mocks, stretching to pinch his cheek and pulling her hand back before it can get slapped away.

“He’s just mad he can't go crying to his brother.” Fandral lets out a bark of laughter, and Loki fights down the urge to kick rubble at him. He's not going to give them what they want.

“I don't know, Fan, I actually think he's mad because he got left behind pretty bad.” Hogun comments casually, and this more than anything is what makes Loki snap.

“Well of fucking course you bunch of idiotic jerks are going to win something as stupid as a race!” He growls. “All your stupid daemons are bigger than mine, Sif has a fucking horse and Fandral’s can fly, how the fuck are we supposed to outrun that?!”

“Honestly? You weren’t” Fandral smiles as Hir comes to perch on his shoulder. “But you wanted to play anyways.” The peahen cackles with laughter on her human’s side, and Loki feels Sterk stirring in his arms to snarl at her.

“No, _we_ wanted to play twenty questions, but you knew we were going to beat you to hell and back.” He crouches to place his daemon on the ground, and crosses his arms in front of his chest, staring defiantly at the others.

“Nah, we just knew you’d cheat your way into winning, where’s the fun in that?” Sif keeps sporting her infuriating smile, and Loki wishes they were kids again so he could just push her to the ground and wrestle it out. Right now she could probably hand him his entire ass on a platter.

“Last time I checked, being smarter wasn’t considered cheating.” He settles for a scathing comeback and continuing the walk over the highway that seems eternal under the bleak sunlight, but that actually ends in about one or two miles at the entrance to the city, if his eyes aren’t deceiving him.

He hears the others laughing behind him, but pays them no mind, until he feels Nada rubbing her forehead on Sterk’s side. That, taking into account the size difference, means Sterk has to push his full weight just to counterbalance and be able to chew on the snow leopard’s ear. Loki feels the corner of his lips curl. It’s not a smile, but it’s much more than he could manage four days ago, when they started playing children’s games to pass the time and keep sane.

“C’mon” Fandral’s face appears out of nowhere next to Loki’s, as his arm drapes across his shoulders. “Bet you my third of that cookie ration you just lost that I can guess whatever you choose in less than fifteen questions.”

This time it _is_ a smile in Loki’s face, as he rolls his eyes. “I want a third of your dried meat too.”

“Hey, the stakes are too high, eighteen questions then.”

“I’ll give you twenty five, start asking.”

\--

“They can’t have come this far.” Thor shakes his head, his arm raised for Lys who’s coming to rest from her flight. She’s been overlooking the area they’re scouting today for a while now, and her wings are tired with the effort spent over several days. “According to the guy, at least one of them was hurt.”

“We haven’t found anything closer to the store though.” Natasha replies. “And they haven’t showed up turned or dead either.”

“Is this really all you two do when you go out?” The third voice shakes them out of their reverie, and Thor turns to look at the temporal member of their search party. Cole is perched on her human’s neck, and Tony’s looking down at the screen of his whatever. All Thor knows is it allows him to identify nearby radio signals being emitted, even if they’re too weak to be received. They hope it’ll be able to tell them _where _to look. “Argue about whether they’re dead or not? Seems like a moot point to me, seeing as we’re looking anyways.”__

__“Tony, this is usually Steve’s job but since he’s not here I’m going to step in for him.” Thor whispers as soon as he comes to stand close enough to the other man. “Natasha is not in the mood and you need to shut up.” The redhead in question is stomping ahead, her daemon stuck to her heels like a shadow._ _

__“Thor, please. Natasha is _never_ in the mood and it’s _always_ of general consensus that I should shut up. If I took those two factors into account for talking I’d have gone mute.” Tony replies. Thor takes a second to breathe deeply, but can’t ignore the spark of warmth that flickers in his stomach at the snarky reply. It reminds him of someone else._ _

__“Are you getting anything at all, or did you just want a chance to get out of the building and made up a story about this thing?” He asks, and Tony gives him a toothy grin._ _

__“Both, actually.” Tony replies. “I hadn’t tried it thoroughly before coming to you two, but it’s working like a charm, which is to be expected considering I made it.”_ _

__“Yeah, focus. Where is it?” Thor presses. His heart is doing sommersaults in his chest, this is the closest they’ve been ever since Steve and Clint disappeared. The urge to strangle Tony when he shrugs with a smirk is ALSO reminding of someone else._ _

__“I have no idea. This is basically a neighborhood-wide game of hot and cold.” Tony explains. “It will tell me when we get closer to the signal it’s picking up because it’ll come stronger, but it can’t pinpoint a location. I’m good, but I can’t build a gps out of a broken DVD man.”_ _

__Thor runs a hand over his face, counting his blessings. “Well, it’s more than what we had before. I’m going to ignore the fact that you didn’t mention we didn’t actually need you operating it because if I don’t Natasha is going to kill you.”_ _

__“That’s a true friend.”_ _

__“And _that_ is an interesting device.” Thor will admit to jumping two feet in the air when the new voice comes out of nowhere. He’ll be a bit less willing to admit how, when he pushed Tony behind him none too gently, his only thought was protecting his little brother. Maybe he’s overdoing it with the Loki parallels. “Are you two alright?”_ _

__When they find him, it turns out the voice belongs to a magpie daemon perched nearby on a broken window. Thor looks around for his human, but when he sees Lys and Cole avert their eyes as if embarrassed, he understands._ _

__“A Separate daemon… Interesting” Tony confirms his suspicions. “Guess it must come in handy, but I can't say I'd have the heart to leave Cole alone and just go around by myself.”_ _

__The magpie gives him a hard stare, and Tony returns it with an uninterested one. In the end, Tony looks away first. By then Natasha’s quick, light steps are coming over._ _

__“Where's your human.” She asks the daemon immediately. Thor looks down briefly; Zorya is staring at the daemon just as intently as Natasha._ _

__“Two days away, at most.” The magpie says with a shake of his wings. “But we’re losing time with all these questions someone else could be responding for you.”_ _

__“What?” Natasha’s eyes narrow._ _

__“Just saying. Your friend here’s device is very interesting, and functional too. You'll probably find your friends in a few days I think.” He stops talking to preen his wing, and Thor feels Lys’ indignation burning in his chest. “Or you could come with me, and find them today.”_ _

__Time at the street seems to come to a standstill, even the dust and dirt seem to have frozen in mid-air._ _

__“How do we know we can trust you.” Natasha asks after a heartbeat._ _

__“You can't. But I have this.” And the magpie moves as if to preen his wing again, but instead opens it and pulls out held between his beak a feather that unmistakably came from Apolla. “I would've gotten something from the big one, but she seemed a bit impatient.”_ _

__Natasha stares a moment longer, then Zorya walks up to the magpie, and stands on her back legs to be face to face with him._ _

__“If you're lying” she starts, and every one of them seems hooked to her low, sultry voice. “I will make a feast with you. And I'll make sure your human feels every single second of it.”_ _

__The magpie gives off an offended caw, but he nods. Slowly, Zorya does the same._ _

__\--_ _

__"see anywhere good?" Sif asks. Fandral keeps looking around. The houses in tthis part of the city look mostly broken down, abandoned and raided and reclaimed, rinse and repeat. He wonders if there's anyone even left in the city, but Loki said this is where Thor is and they don't have any better leads, so he's climbed up to the highest broken window he can find so that Hir has a better viewpoint._ _

__"I see a place with covered windows, not far from here." Hir says through their bond, she's flapping her wings a few feet over him and her eyes are fixed ahead and to the left. "Maybe the boarding is reinforced and it will be safe enough?"_ _

__"Hey Sif. Hir says there's a place with boarded windows a block away. It's only newspaper though, wanna go check it out?" He asks._ _

__"Newspaper is more than anything" Sif declares after a shrug, and Fandral makes his way down to the street again, then extends an arm up. Hir comes down and perches on it; she's not a bird of prey, but they feel badass when they do this so fuck it._ _

__Someone pushes his shoulder, and he stumbles forward. He's turning around in a second, hand around his axe's handle -he has a spare moment to think of what this world has done to him- but it's just Loki, already walking past him with a stupid smirk._ _

__"Will you ever get tired of doing that, you incredible loser?" Loki asks._ _

__Fandral catches up to him, huffing. "Do what?"_ _

__"That thing you do with Hir where you pretend you look cool. You've been doing it since you were like twelve."_ _

__"Well you've been an annoying piece of shit since like when you began to exist, I think I get a free pass." Fandral counters._ _

__"Excuse me? I'm a delight, my friends all said that." Loki waves the insult away. Fandral rolls his eyes._ _

__"Anansi and Eris were even shittier than you"_ _

__That makes Loki's smirk change, but not, as Fandral feared, into a scowl. Instead it merely becomes a smile. A bit sad, but a smile nonetheless._ _

__"You were head over heels for Eris." He teases. It feels weird, that not a month ago Loki had refused to even speak to Fandral as he starved himself to death, and now they're teasing and bantering like before, when they weren't the best of friends but were the only person they really _knew_ because they'd both been super stubborn and gone to college a thousand miles from their home._ _

__And even all of that doesn't feel as weird as remembering Eris._ _

__"That doesn't mean she wasn't shitty, if anything, she was the shittiest" he says._ _

__Loki has the tact to not remark on his strained voice. "She was. She also liked you. Eris always had a spot for the goofy pretty boy type"_ _

__Fandral takes a deep breath, and it tastes bitter. "It's no use knowing that now is it?"_ _

__Loki shrugs. "It's good remembering them though."_ _

__Fandral doesn't reply to that, because what answer could there possibly be? So he keeps walking side by side with Loki and Sterk and with Hir by her favored spot on his shoulder, until they get to the house she mentioned._ _

__It looks as abandoned as any of its neighbors, the only difference being the spread newspapers haphazardly attached to the windows, and the hole in the door is covered frim the inside by what seems to be a couch._ _

__"Do you think someone's using it?" Fandral asks, gesturing to the blockade by the door. "It doesn't make much sense to barricade a door if you're going to leave."_ _

__"It does if you're escaping through the back door" Hogun shrugs by his side._ _

__"And in the off case it's being used, they're gonna have to share." Sif puts in, stepping forward. "It's getting dark and we're only passing through, they'll survive."_ _

__It only takes a few pushes from Jano to force the entrance open, and they put the couch back in place when they enter and close the door behind thenselves._ _

__"There's someone here." Loki says immediately, and just like that they're all on their guard. They might not be coming here for trouble, but if whoever was here first wants to start it, they're going to be ready for them._ _

Sterk advances forward, all fluffed up and looking thrice his size. The sight of his hackles raised to reveal the white fangs beneath contrasts uncannily with the way the fox daemon moves without the slightest sound.

"There..." Loki whispers and points to a door on the side of the living room. The entrance is covered by a raggedy curtain, but is otherwise unblocked. Fandral walks to Loki's side and makes to push the curtain aside with his axe's handle, when a voice comes from behind him.

"I have a gun" and well, Fandral thinks, there are few phrases as well suited as that one to make a whole group of people stop on their tracks. "And I see at least two easy targets that won't have to be afraid of zombies anymore if you take one more step towards that room"

Fandral barely moves, instead merely drops his weapon on the floor, and turns on the spot. Nada and Jano remain defiantly on the open, glaring at the guy.

__

__He feels Loki turn beside him, and the hawk daemon caws anxiously, just as the man's eyes widen and his hold on the gun goes lax._ _

__"Loki?" He asks. Fandral can't turn his head fast enough, but when he does, Loki is mirroring the man's expression, and Sterk is making himself as small as he possibly can as he retreats to hide behind a pile of garbage._ _

__"Is it really you Barton?"_ _

__And it seems like it really _is_ Barton, whoever that is, because the guy finally lowers the muzzle of the gun. He lets go with a hand to run it over his face, and the bark of laughter that escapes him is just incredulous enough that Fandral takes offense on Loki's behalf. _ _

__"I can't believe you're here... Thor kept saying he could feel you were alive but-"_ _

__"Is Thor alive?" Loki cuts him up, and to the guy's credit, he doesn't take it to heart._ _

__"He is, I'm sure. Me and a friend, we got separated from the group, we haven't gotten up to look for them because my mate is pretty seriously ill." He then looks at Jano in a much too casual way, his free hand rubbing his chin. "We could probably make a stretcher that daemon could pull and then-"_ _

__"Wait a minute there." Sif takes a step forward. Annoyance is written on her face, and Jano stomps a hoof threatening behind. "Never mind the fact that he wants to use Jano as a tow mule, how do you even know this guy Loki?"_ _

__Under her scrutiny, Loki only shrugs. Fandral has to respect him for that._ _

__"We played videogames online together." He explains. "I think we met once or twice at parties..." he seems to hesitate, before he adds. "He's one of Thor's friends."_ _

__And it's at that moment, even though the guy had mentioned it before, that Fandral feels a weight being taken off his shoulders, and breathes deeply for what feels like the first time in who knows how long. A quick look through the corner of his eye reveals Sif and Hogun are in similar states of relief._ _

__For some reason, Loki isn't._ _

__"Well then..." Sif sighs. "We'll help you move your friend, if he can wait until tomorrow. We've been walking all day and frankly, I dont want to risk whatever's out there at night."_ _

__The Barton guy climbs down from the shelf; his daemon is looking around curiously, and it doesn't escape Fandral's attention that Sterk is halfway hidden behind the pile of trash. Just in case, Hir moves to stand between him and the humans, and fluffs her feathers up to hide him better._ _

__"You can sleep here then, just-" The Barton guy looks towards the curtained door. "Don't try to go in there without me, Steve is in serious pain since Moć left this morning, and his daemon is a wildcat and pretty much insane at this point."_ _

__As if to confirm his words, a low snarl comes from behind the curtain._ _

__

__"See? Anyways, make yourselves comfortable, we don't have much food but it's enough to share for tonight." The guy says, and prances down happily to a small pile of cans. "I was beginning to think I'd have to leave Steve alone to go looking for the others"_ _

__"How did you two end up alone anyways? One. Would have to be stupid to just break from their group" Sif asks. Fandral rolls his eyes behind her. Tactful as a sledgehammer, that one. Luckily for her, neither Loki nor the other guy flinch at her unintentional jab._ _

__"It's not a particularly happy story" The guy shrugged. "I figure it's cool, I mean it involves Steve and me beating the absolute crap our of a band of nutjobs that wanted to feed us to their zombie hunting dogs, so cool, but not happy."_ _

__"Is that how your friend got hurt? A dog bit him?" Fandral asks with a wince. All these things happening and to die of something as mundane as an infected dog bite..._ _

__"No." Barton replies, and there's a haunted shade to his eyes that wasn't there before. "He... fell. From a high place."_ _

__Fandral sighs. A broken bone is only marginally better than an infected wound.  
He looks at Loki, who hasn't come closer to where they're sorting through the guy's cans. Hir is still covering Sterk from sight, and Fandral feels a slight pull from her being just a bit too far. He walks over._ _

__"What's wrong?" He asks._ _

__"Hm?" Loki replies like he's only half aware he's talking to him._ _

__"You don't seem as thrilled to see Thor as I thought you'd be." Fandral whispers. Loki turns his head to stare at him, and Fandral realizes he's scared. He presses on, hurriedly this time. "Is it because of your daemon? He will- we're all OK with it Loki."_ _

__The other shakes his head slowly. "Thor will ask questions." He says finally. "Im not ready to tell him."_ _

__Fandral is a bit uncomfortable by all of this, but he supposes that in absence of both Eris and Anansi, he will have to do._ _

__"Then don't tell him yet. He will understand if you don't want to." He offers. "We understood."_ _

__"You did." Loki nods. And then "I- I don't know if I want to die Fandral."_ _

__"What?" Fandral feels soft fur against his cheek where Hir is cuddling Sterk, who surprisingly doesn't feel as terrified as Loki looks. "Of course you don't want to die, what are you talking about?"_ _

__"I-"_ _

__And that's when the couch/barricade screeches against the dusty floor, and Thor pushes the door open with only a bit more of the effort Jano put into it._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always welcome, and they seriously fuel me to write more, so if you have something to say go ahead!

**Author's Note:**

> Daemon list
> 
> Steve - Magna (great,sublime), cougar, female 
> 
> Thor - Lys (light), eagle, female 
> 
> Tony - Colchis/Cole sand cat, female
> 
> Loki - Sterk (strength), coyote, male 
> 
> Natasha - Zorya (star), lynx, female 
> 
> Clint - Apolla (Apollo/female form), peregrine falcon, female 
> 
> Bruce - Ashwagandha/Ashwa (the name of a relaxing herb), bear, female 
> 
> Jane - Áster (night), raven, male 
> 
> Darcy - Vitam/Vita (life), otter, male 
> 
> Sif - Jano (two-faced god, associated with choice), war horse, male 
> 
> Hogun - Nada (hope), snow leopard, female
> 
> Volstagg - Cariad (love), Great Pyrenees (dog), female
> 
> Fandral - Hir (charisma), peahen, female


End file.
